Kevin Smith has been pissing me off lately.

Yeah, his whole stunt at Sundance was a kernel of a good idea wrapped in a huge ball of douchebag.  I respect him literally going all in with the rest of his career, but to invite acquisition folks he's known for 15 years under false pretenses, then insult them publicly to their face, and then rant incoherently about your half brained scheme...wow.  Whatta guy.

Let's not confuse directing with screenwriting, though. While yes they are functionally the same in terms of telling the story, for the sake of an award they are necessarily, if arbitrarily, partitioned.

I like INCEPTION quite a lot and I think it shows Christopher Nolan to be a strong director, but not the best director of the year -- nor is the film really a Best Picture candidate. I don't think it's actually that convoluted, although it does have a lot of setup for imaginative possibilities that aren't ultimately paid off.

Oh, and Kevin Smith sucks now. He used to be pretty cool -- at the 10th Anniversary of CLERKS he was totally affable and approachable, I even got to chat with him one on one for a while -- but he's got this personality disorder where the more success he gets the more insecure and neurotic he becomes. I loved a lot of his early stuff but I really just can't stand him anymore.

I enjoy Inception quite a bit for its creativity, if not its overall coherence.  I'm not too miffed he missed Best Director, but I'm happy with the Best Picture Nom.  It won't win a whole lot Oscar night, but it was certainly a movie I enjoy. 

As for Kev, Chasing Amy was a hugely influential movie on me, in terms of how to balance tone and nail a not-so-happy ending that's still satisfying.  These days, Smith is so insular in his echo chamber of fanboys its just depressing to watch.  I saw him speak at the DGA in 2000 and he was so warm and affable it was refreshing.  But the success of his speaking engagements created this cult of personality that he's never quite been able to escape from.

I'm simplifying a bit here, but I think it's because studios are continuing to focus more and more on big-budget spectacles designed to make a lot of money back.    The Transformers movies make tons of money, but very few people would call them "good", except maybe the guys in Accounting.

Some movies manage to be both crowd-pleasing spectacles AND good, I'd put the Potter series on that list myself.    And Chris Nolan manages to bridge that gap - although even he would never have gotten to make a movie as complicated and marketing-unfriendly as Inception if he hadn't broken the bank with a couple of Batman movies first.     Batman was the reason those movies got made, Nolan was the reason they were more than just Batman movies.

Social Network I suspect got the greenlight because "kids like that Face Book, right?"  But Fincher and Sorkin ended up making a fascinating character study that the kids didn't actually go see.    So that one got through because it seemed like a moneymaker, and - unfortunately for the Accounting department - turned out to just be a good flick.

William Goldman has described the Oscars - I'm paraphrasing - as the day each year when Hollywood gets all dressed up and tries to tell themselves they still make worthwhile movies and not just pandering crap.   So when it comes time to vote for Best Picture, it's less likely than it used to be that the Best Picture was also the biggest moneymaker, because that's become two very different kinds of movies.

Or Hurt Locker was a marginally better film.

The Oscars are the very definition of a popularity contest, and a popularity contest among people who are generally undereducated about everything except their craft, who are self-important and frequently told they are brilliant, and who are largely very happy with the way their lives turned out and are isolated from those who are not.

Those vectors do not intersect at dark, tragic, and difficult-to-digest OR at lighthearted laughs OR at fantastical adventure. They won't love depressing stories; they won't vote for comedies; and they won't understand nerd flicks.