Nicest surprise? Marion Cotillard getting the call for “Deux Jours, Une Nuit.”

• Michael C. at Film Experience asks a good question: Why Wes, Why Now?
• Mark Harris at Grantland asks a different question: Why Not Selma? And no, he says, it's not that reason.
• Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere tells the other Oscar pundits, “Told ya so!” over Marion Cotillard's nomination. 
• Don't forget to vote for your choice for best director. 
• Same site: Nathaniel on his five stages of grief via the noms. Mostly, it's about “Selma.” I particularly like stage 2.
• “Life Itself” was one of the big snubs but Chaz Ebert, Roger's widow, who was also rooting on Ana DuVarnay for best director, is magnanimous.
• Director Phil Lord, whose “The LEGO Movie” was shockingly absent from best animated feature, gets a laugh out of it.
• Meanwhile “Force Majeure” director Ruben Ostlund, and his producer Erik Hemmendorf, are a little more emotional about being snubbed.
• Speaking of emotional, Sasha Stone of Awards Daily is a little so in her piece “Just Make Us Look Good,” playing the race and gender cards rather quickly and chastising the Academy for tepid choices as if it were new. She also needs an editor. (I know: pot, kettle.)
• Did you know there's a #OscarsSoWhite hashtag on Twitter? A lot of outrage out there. Misdirected I think. #OscarsSoOscar would be more apt. And if you're going to complain that the 20 nominees in acting are white, give us an idea (beyond David Oyelowo) who should replace whom.
• More and more, I'm in agreement with Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells on the subject. Well, a bit. “Mississippi Burning” still burns me. I've read too much about the civil rights movement and J. Edgar Hoover to go and make heroes of the FBI in Mississippi in 1964. Seriously: fuck that.
• Related: all the movies and filmmakers and artists and artisans that didn't get the nom I thought they deserved. Ah, but all of those that did.