The "biggest mystery of this year's Academy Awards" is how director Christopher Nolan, 40, garnered Best Picture and Best Original Screeplay nominations for his dreamy sci-fi hit, Inception, but failed to get a Best Director nod, says Chris Lee at The Daily Beast. The puzzling omission is a "slap in the face for a film-making wunderkind whose meteoric rise from art house auteur to Intelligent Action Ace has made him, arguably, the hottest director in town." One theory: Perhaps Nolan's peers failed to nominate him because they're jealous that he "enjoyed too much success too soon." But it's a bit more complicated, says Lee. Here, an excerpt from the Daily Beast:
"The directors have always been a persnickety branch, often going for a foreign language director over a mainstream filmmaker," the source said. "They don't seem to like to reward blockbuster directors. And they rarely award sci-fi or heavy special-effects films."
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In the eyes of one awards season campaign veteran, though, Nolan's Oscar snub boils down to the primary knock against Inception. With its shoot 'em up action layered between dreams within dreams within dreams, the movie is, well, confusing.
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