Oscar still has his balls.

Okay, so... The Dark Knight was NOT nominated for Best Picture or Best Director? Well, that's great for the Oscars. It shows that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is still concerned about the art form of making movies, and improving the quality of those movies, and not caving into public pressure from fans and the general public.

But, how was that determination to keep The Dark Knight out of consideration and not nominated? Well, let's look at these separately.

Best Picture?
The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only to vote on the final ballot, but also to nominate. So, the industry ITSELF decided that The Dark Knight wasn't worthy of a nomination? I guess so, since it is the ONLY category that EVERY member can vote on to nominate a movie. After all, it's not as if only 5 people said not to nominate the movie and that was it. The ENTIRE AMPAS voted on The Dark Knight and found it failing.

But how could that be? Since the Oscar goes to the "Best Picture" which is defined as: "The Academy Award for Best Picture is the final result of the collaborative producing, directing, acting, and writing efforts put forth for a film."
So, I guess that would mean that people inside the industry that voted for the nominations MUST have found some problems in the Director, the Actors, the acting and script, dialogue, settings, scenery..etc,etc,etc. Honestly, I can see the problems that the Academy Award would have with The Dark Knight. Questions are still being asked about the fact that the director has issues with directing action scenes FOR an 'action movie'. There's never any real character development in the movie since we've had the characters since the 1930's. Sorry gang, but Batman and his universe of characters will never be original at this point. And of course, let's not forget that there have been constant complaints about the script being more of a "Telling you what I just did, or will do", and not letting the actors tell the story by DOING. So, yeah..... I can see why this one never came about.

Best Director?
While nominations for Best Director are made by members in the Academy's Directing branch, the award winners are selected by the Academy membership as a whole. So, Christopher Nolan was snubbed out by OTHER Directors? Yep, that's right gang. A group of people that should know more about the art of Directing a movie than anyone else have determined that Nolan wasn't worthy of recognition for the Oscar. Well, what more can I say? This is JUST the thing to keep you all quite. It's OTHER Directors, knowing the ins-and-outs of what a Director does behind the cameras. These are Nolan's PEERS (A person who has equal standing with another or others, as in rank, class, or age: for those of you who don't know the meaning of the word) saying that his efforts aren't worthy of an Oscar.

But, how could that happen to someone that made such a money-making movie? According to the AMPAS a Best Director award is given to someone for their: "Achievement in directing." Does making a popular movie mean it's an achievement? Well, of course not. Pre-TDK there was Ironman making all of the money, should Ironman have been nominated for Best Director? Well, then what about the fact that Nolan was successful at making a sequel, would that be enough to be an 'Achievement'? Only if we also include the people that did Saw 5, Madagascar 2, and let's not forget that lovely movie High School Musical 3.
So, what is considered an 'Achievement' in Directing? Well, honestly I can't answer that question for you. I'm not part of the AMPAS Directing guild, nor am I working in movies. However, if I can sit back and see flaws in the way a scene was filmed, or how an actor doesn't seem to be putting forth the best effort, or if I can find holes in logical process of the characters actions, and of course see problems with script/dialogue then it's quite clear that the Director ON the movie should have been able to see those problems and fix them BEFORE the movie was released to the public.

I'm sorry gang, but on this one the Academy has the BALLS to tell you how WRONG you are about the ART FORM of making a movie. It's NEVER a question of popularity. It's NEVER a question of 'opinion' from the public. It's NEVER a question of critic's choices. (Especially when so many critic awards already exist)

The Oscars are given out by people that are INSIDE the industry, working at making movies, selecting other industry members, determining their works on a single movie-by-movie basis, and telling THAT person if they are doing a good enough job to be nominated. In the case of Christopher Nolan, the Nominations tell him that he still needs to work at his Directing skills, and find flaws and problems and fix them on the set before the movie is release. In the case of The Dark Knight, it's saying that it wasn't as great of an "Art" that it could have been. There's a difference between art and commercial success, so who's better to make that decision than the other artist involved?

Now, if you want something to get really upset about, where's the OUTCRY about "The Fall" being snubbed for Art Design, or Set Design or Best Visual Effect?

So, congratulations to the Oscars for having the Balls to stand up to public pressure and preserve their judgment on the ART FORM of making movies, and not caving into critics and fanboys and public interests. Industry standards should never be influenced by people outside that Industry, no matter if it's making hamburgers or movies. If the end result is a lesser product in order to appease people, you'll loose more and more respect from the public.

Keep those balls swinging.