If only Bono had cameo'd in every great movie the past year...

...then the old white men at the Oscars would have paid attention.

I gave up on "cinematography" in 2010 as a bankrupt category when Avatar won for cinematography. To be fair, Avatar totally deserved its win for best visual effect. It was a marvel of special effects.

But special effects ≠ cinematography. Period. Full stop. Cinematography is what the camera captures: the lighting, the composition, the setting. Cinematography is not pixels created by digital artists, no matter how beautifully done.

So while you may be completely correct in your assertion that Selma deserved a nomination for cinematography (I don't know, I haven't seen Selma yet), it is a meaningless award when the Academy can't figure out the difference between cinematography and special effects.

/rant.

@3,

The problem is that, while only members who work in the given category pick the nominees, the entire Academy votes for the final selection, and there are many film illiterates in the industry. Although why actual cinematographers nominated Avatar at all for that category is beyond me.

I know that awards are frivolous publicity tools, but the exclusion of DuVernay and Young from the nominations is somewhere between depressing and outrageous.

@5 -- "Somewhere between depressing and outrageous" -- yes, that sums it up.

As a long-time Wes Anderson fan, though, it is pretty weird to be living in a world where one of his movies tied for the most Oscar nominations of any 2014 film.

@7 As usual, I'm with Josh. And there's a sad irony that Life Itself wasn't nominated: no one championed Ava DuVernay like Roger Ebert (and no one championed Steve James's Hoop Dreams like the late film critic).

@8, Among many other excellent observations about today's nominations, Mark Harris on the Ebert snub:

"The omission of Life Itself from Best Documentary Feature would, I hope, have amused Roger Ebert as much as it will appall everyone who knew Roger Ebert. It is a good reminder of a couple of things, namely that one should never take the Oscars too seriously or expect them to be nice to a movie critic, even in death." -- Grantland

Things that still don't matter: award show nominations.

The Master was overlooked for a cinematography nomination back in 2012. Life of Pi won that year.

Regardless of who else is nominated in the cinematography category this is really Chivo Lubezki's to lose. The single-shot conceit was the most entertaining part of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Without it -- and the jazz drum score -- that movie's a dud.

And I'd like to make an argument that awards show nominations kind of do matter. in so much as they are the main forum for professionals in a given field -- one of America's biggest economic exports -- to educate the laymen/consumers of their work about who they think are the best at what they do. Sure, there are gross politics and showboating involved, but that's the case in almost any workplace.

It's funny what prompts people to stop taking industry awards seriously.

I am shocked that the LEGO Movie got no Oscar Gnomes