I haven't seen "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" So i can't say that it's not a good movie, it might deserve 13 nominations, but i have seen a lot of movies this year and, once again, the list of nominations looks more like a commercial for smaller films than nominations for the best.
The list of the 5 best movies according to the Oscars are "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", "Frost/Nixon", "Milk", "The Reader", and "Slum Dog Millionaire". Not a bad list of movies, but there seems to be a gap or two.
What is it about the Oscars, or the Academy for that matter that generally wants to avoid giving any awards to big budget movies?
Heath Ledger has been given the best supporting actor nomination everyone expected, but how is it possible that "The Dark Knight" didn't get nominated for best director or best movie?
The answer I come up with is genre bias. How is it that "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was nominated then? That's easy, its by F. Scott Fitzgerald and for some reason people love his work. Personally, I found "The Great Gatsby" to be incredibly boring, and haven't read this because of that, but from what i know I have a feeling it's not really a genre movie. This is just a weird guy living his life. Again I haven't seen it so I could be completely wrong here, but I have seen both "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight" and i don't buy that all five of those movies are actually better than them, they just get the nominations because they need the help, but I'm not sure that affirmative action for movies is a good idea.