And the loser is...

...obviously IFC Films, who, more than any other studio out there, had the finest crop of films in American theatres and walked away with zero Oscar nominations. It probably doesn't help that a bulk of their films weren't in the English language... and the ones that were (Filth and Wisdom, Nights and Weekends) didn't have an ice cube's chance in hell to be nominated. When the big blow of Gomorrah being left out of the foreign language short-list, their only hopes at a score in that category came from Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments, which looks like a giant bore but possibly the sort of bore the people who vote for foreign-language film would go for. I suppose not, as it wasn't among the five nominees this morning, and strangely, the as-of-yet-unpurchased-and-critcally-bashed Baader Meinhof Complex was. The push I heard the company was making for both Gomorrah and Hunger, an English language film that's too visually and narratively experimental to get recognized by the Academy, in the bigger categories (Director and Adapted Screenplay for Gomorrah, Actor for Hunger) didn't pay off either, even though, with so many of the studio's Oscar hopefuls failing to resonate with critics, this would have been the year to do so. Maybe the Independent Spirits, a ceremony more likely to award the challenging work that IFC Films put out in 2008 (Sangre de mi sangre, Gomorrah, Hunger and The Secret of the Grain are all nominated), will show them they love they deserve. It's a thankless job.