Silver Linings Playbook (as a story, anyhow) is not really in the same league as some of the other 2012 Best Picture nominations—especially Beasts of the Southern Wild, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, and Life of Pi.  However, I am impressed that somebody found Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone, The Hunger Games, etc.) a reasonable transition-from-teen-star to interesting-young-woman project.  I hope no-one got too much money casting the also-excellent Julia Stiles as Lawrence’s older sister, though, because I thought of Stiles the very first time I saw Lawrence (in Winter’s Bone).

In addition:  People, you should watch the actual movies, not the damn Oscars show!  In the 4-6 hours you’ll waste on that broadcast and surrounding filler (not to mention the extended water-cooler chit-chat time on Monday), you could have watched 2 or 3 of the actual movies.  I still have Les Misérables and Amour to watch, and, as I don’t have TV, I’ll instead be watching those two movies tomorrow evening.

Nine contenders is too many!  As a Canadian, I find Argo deeply flawed and misleading, I didn’t find Django Unchained to be nearly as good as Tarantino’s last movie (Inglourious Basterds), and so on.  So, there probably should have been more like six (possibly even only five) nominees.