Film fans know this, we say it every year, and yet, and yet…it’s still disappointing when our favorite films are overlooked. My Facebook friends are boo-hooing over Christopher Nolan’s near miss at a Best Picture nod for The Dark Knight (I don’t share their sense of loss; it’s a stunning movie with the best villain performance in years, but has no sense of story). The real loss is that the Academy didn’t see fit to nominate Wall-E, which is as close to a masterwork as we’ve seen in film this year. It’s also a perfect 2008 movie: in the year that we most radically came face to face with the consequences of our over-comsumption, we had a gorgeous, prophetic movie about that exact subject, both chiding us and showing us how to overcome ourselves. 

It’s a shame that animated films don’t get nominated for Best Picture, because it is not unusual for some of the best storytelling, cinematography, acting, and all-around movie-making to happen in cartoons. The Iron Giant, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille were all among the best films of their years, and that’s just to mention American work. 

I’ve yet to see Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, or Frost/Nixon–studios are still reluctant to shed their old rollout distribution habits, so it takes forEVer for good movies to get to Colorado Springs. (But hey, Fireproof is still showing!). So of the nominated pics, so far my vote would go to Benjamin Button. Awesome movie to look at, with fine acting. Way too Forrest Gump-y for my usual tastes, but I was taken in by its audacious attempt to tackle big huge human themes: Loss. Regret. Responsibility. Colorado’s own David Fincher has proven his ability to make movies in the big, classy old Hollywood style.