One benefit of Oscar season–besides finding out which gown designer is totally hot–is the rash of articles about worthy movies that didn’t get nominated. The films that make critics’ woulda-shoulda lists are jewels that are too small, too weird, or too spiritually challenging for a statue. The San Francisco Chronicle’s version this year comes in the form of an interview with Stephen Simon, the erstwhile Hollywood producer (“Smokey and the Bandit”; “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”) who chucked it all to found The Spiritual Cinema Circle, a kind of Netflix of the soul. Besides pumping Cameron Crowe’s critical punching bag “Elizabethtown,” Simon wishes for a world in which Oscars would go to Kevin Costner and Joan Allen for “The Upside of Anger” or Anthony Hopkins in “The World’s Fastest Indian.”

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