The elephant in the room - Nolan's snub

Christopher Nolan has been nominated for the Directors Guild of America award three times - for Memento, The Dark Knight, and Inception. How many times has he been nominated for Best Director at the Oscars? He hasn't.

In 2008, The Dark Knight earned eight nominations, but missed on Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. This was after it scored nominees in most major guilds and seemed to have the industry support to go the distance and be the first superhero film to earn a Best Picture nomination.

Lots of analysts pointed to this as one of several reasons behind the expansion to 10 Best Picture nominees - an opportunity to finally give more space to big blockbuster successes without pushing out the prestige films; the Oscars could finally get viewers from all demographics.

Two years later; the story's almost the same. Amid all the talk about The King's Speech and True Grit, the general population only really seems concerned about one thing: Christopher Nolan was not nominated for Best Director.

Never mind that Inception gained eight nominations, tying it for third-most on the day with The Social Network. Never mind that Nolan is actually nominated for two Oscars -- as writer for Best Original Screenplay and as co-producer for Best Picture. For Inception's most ardent supporters -- the young demographics who regularly tune out the Academy Awards -- not nominating the "blockbuster visionary" is a greater sin than snubbing the film for Picture would have been.

But let's put it into perspective: it sucks that Nolan didn't nominated for Best Director, yes. Inception is an intricately constructed film that demanded a huge talent to not only make it work, but make it coherent. The film has its rewards all across the nominee list (sans Film Editing, the other place where it almost inexplicably got shafted in favor of 127 Hours). That, and his absence "made room" for both the Coens and David O. Russell to earn nominations.

So what? The Coens already have a Directing Oscar. That's true, but it's better than the Stephen Daldry coup in 2008, when The Reader swept in and seemed to steal Nolan's three potential nominations. At least this time it was something people could see coming, not a left-field blow-out. Besides, it seems obvious True Grit had a huge groundswell of support across the board, bolstering up the Coens and lowering Nolan.

If there were five films and not ten in the Best Picture race, Inception would not have been nominated. I think that's safe to say. The expanded field helped it get the big mention as the Academy chose to give Westerns a hug and, as per usual, give a slightly dismissive nod to sci-fi. Not that they can't recognize well-crafted sci-fi when they see it (the eight nominations are, after all, still eight nominations), they'd just rather go after the genres they're more comfortable with.

Maybe this is a step back for the Academy? I don't necessarily think so. It's, if anything, more of the same. If anything, Inception is a tiny step forward in getting visionary sci-fi accepted. Nolan will get the recognition he deserves as a director some day. Lest we forget, he's still up for Academy Awards this year. Those in Nolan's camp still have plenty to root for.