Lord knows I’ve had my complaints about the Oscars over the years but lately I’ve begun to have more complaints about Oscar’s complainers. A recent “Must List” in Entertainment Weekly is indicative. They subtitled it “Snubbed by Oscar Edition” and listed off 10 of the snubbees, including two for best actress (Keri Russell for Waitress, Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart), two for best actor (Christian Bale for Rescue Dawn and Ryan Gosling for Lars and the Girl) and two for best director (Joe Wright for Atonement and Sean Penn for Into the Wild).

All fine. But you’re not dealing with an infinite number of spaces here. So if you’re going to say Wright and Penn both deserve director nods, tell us who didn’t deserve them. Julian Schnabel? Jason Reitman? Tony Gilroy? Angelina Jolie was great. So choose her over who? Ellen Page? Cate Blanchett? And really? Christian Bale and/or Ryan Gosling over Tommy Lee Jones or Viggo Mortensen or Johnny Depp or George Clooney or Daniel Day-Lewis? If you’re adding, you gotta subtract. If you’re going to bitch about the Academy, you’ve gotta play within their parameters. Otherwise we’re back to grade school and everyone deserves a gold star.

And that’s my first petty bitching about other people’s petty bitching.

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