A certainty at the Academy Awards every year is that some films- whether audience favourites or critically acclaimed avant-garde cinema- will fail to land the nominations they were expecting or indeed worthy of. This year the usual array of Oscar bait comes in the form of Tom Hooper’s surprisingly saccharine adaptation of West End crowd-pleaser Les Miserables, David O. Russell’s warm and fuzzy Silver Linings Playbook masquerading as an edgy drama about mental health, and Steven Spielberg’s historical epic (in length, rather than content) Lincoln. We see them square off against the likes of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Ben Affleck’s Argo, which has performed remarkably well on the awards circuit, now baring a slew of ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Picture’ accolades to its name.

Yet this Sunday, Affleck won’t be taking home a Best Director nod; his absence from the nominees list was one of the biggest shocks back in January. Also notably absent are Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and one might argue Wes Anderson, for the most charming film of 2012, Moonrise Kingdom. It’s not just the festival underdogs that failed to make the grade, though; even Tom Hooper has failed to gain a second nomination after his 2010 win for The King’s Speech.

Also worth noting are the absence from Best Actress/Actor categories of Marion Cotillard, who gave a superb performance in Rust and Bone, and Suraj Sharma, whose impressive film debut in Life of Pi saw him act for most of the film solely with a CGI tiger. Yet the most ridiculous nominee has to be the nod to Ted for Best Original Song, whilst Rick Ross and John Legend’s outstanding contributions to the Django Unchained soundtrack would have been far more worthy of recognition. One has to wonder if that nomination was awarded as part of Seth MacFarlane’s contract to host.

Of course, the optimists among us might simply attribute the aforementioned names and their absence from the nominations as a sign that it’s been a great year for cinema, in which there were always going to be more worthy contenders than prizes to give out. Yet the cinema cynics will no doubt know there’s more to it than this. The Academy Awards have been for many years about campaigning, and the success of a film at the Oscars often comes down to the simple matter of who’s got the time and money, and who makes a film that pleases the old white heterosexual men who are still the dominant voice in the Academy. It never hurts to have Harvey Weinstein’s backing either; he’s the Academy’s answer to Vito Corleone.

The film industry is unfair, and the Oscars as its highest accolade award not true innovation or talent, but what is safe, consistent, and polished. Yet as a slave to the industry, I’ll be tuning in, if only to see who looks the most bitter when their name isn’t the one inside the golden envelope.

Hannah Woodhead