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Now, about those Oscar nominations. As always, I tip my hat to the lowly writers, who got it right once again. In all the brouhaha about having 10 best-picture nominees rather than five, people forget that the screenwriters have always nominated 10 candidates, albeit divided into two categories. This year they tagged The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, The Messenger, A Serious Man and Up as the best original screenplays, and District 9, An Education, In the Loop, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, and Up in the Air as the best adapted ones. With the exception of two films, that list is identical to the best-picture list. But the switches are significant.

Avatar, in which computer-generated, allegedly peace-loving natives wage violent war on invading U.S. marines, is a nominee for best picture, but not for original screenplay. The writers replaced it with The Messenger, about two U.S. soldiers who deliver the news to families that their loved ones have died. (It's due to open in Canada in the nick of time, Feb. 26.) As well, the best-picture nominee The Blind Side, about a sassy, southern, right-wing mama who adopts a homeless black teenager and makes him into a star football player, is not on the adapted screenplay list. Instead, the writers nominated In the Loop, a corrosive drama about British and American politics in the current Gulf War.

See what I mean about getting it right? Though the feeling out there is that Avatar is an unstoppable juggernaut on its way to best picture, it is a truth universally acknowledged that it's successful despite its tin-eared screenplay, not because of it. The Messenger, by contrast, is a gem of what can and cannot be conveyed with words.

Though it scarcely seems possible, The Blind Side and In the Loop are even more polar opposites. The script for In the Loop is lightning-fast, fiercely intelligent, super-verbal, deeply cynical and demands that its audience keep up. The Blind Side is slow-witted, tension-free, tear-jerking optimism that is spoon-fed, with every beat repeated a few times for those who have dozed off. Audiences have made their preference clear: In the Loop grossed $2.38-million (U.S.) in North America. So far The Blind Side has grossed 100 times that, $238-million, with more to come. Which makes Hollywood right to have made it, and the writers equally right to have not included it on their nominee list.

But as all the nominations have made clear, 2009 was a particularly zany movie year, all over the place, with lots of everything for everyone. Whether that makes it an ideal or a disastrous annum to have 10 best-picture nominees is up to you.

The folks at Box Office Mojo, the go-to website for grosses, posited a solid, dollar-based view. They listed the 10 best-picture nominees in descending order of earnings – Avatar, Up, The Blind Side, Inglourious Basterds, District 9, Up in the Air, Precious, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, An Education – and declared that the top five are likely the expansion candidates, while the bottom five are the pictures that serious academy members wish would win.

But to my mind, that's a little too simple. Avatar and The Hurt Locker (which follows bomb-defusing soldiers around Iraq) have nine nominations each. Though they tied in seven categories, The Hurt Locker has an edge in the so-called art categories (best actor and original screenplay), while Avatar leads in the craft categories (art direction and visual effects). That's a tidy metaphor for the dichotomy we're seeing these days – noble "David" films that concentrate on art and make less money (domestic – United States and Canada – gross for The Hurt Locker: $12-million) versus commercial "Goliaths" for whom box office matters most (Avatar's domestic gross: $600-million).

But technical achievements are a huge component of films – and Oscars – and Avatar would surely have made the best-picture cut even on a list of five. Meanwhile, in addition to best picture, the high-grossers Inglourious Basterds and District 9 earned seven and three other nominations, respectively; while the middle-earners Up in the Air and Precious have five other nods each. So it's not just about money.

When you factor in the acting categories, the confusion multiplies. Crazy Heart, Invictus and The Last Station got two acting nods each, but were shut out of other categories (well, Crazy Heart was nominated for best song), even though they're the kind of middle-budget, A-list fare that Oscar usually dotes on. Meanwhile, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci are the sole nominees for their films Julie & Julia, A Single Man and The Lovely Bones, pictures that are, respectively, middlebrow, highbrow and mega-budget.

Finally, those wacky art directors, cinematographers, costume designers, makeup artists and sound and effects folks have tossed in a handful of orphan or populist nominees, including The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Sherlock Holmes, The Young Victoria, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bright Star, Coco Avant Chanel, Star Trek and Il Divo. In short, one hardly needed 10 best-picture nominees to broaden this year's field.

Whether having 10 best-picture contenders will actually lure more viewers to the Oscar telecast remains to be seen. On the one hand, it’s a pretty cynical move: Nominate five “extra” movies that have no chance of winning and hope that audiences aren’t too disappointed when they don’t. But on the other – hey, show business has always been a polyglot world, commerce and art co-existing like Oscar and Felix. What we’re seeing on this Oscar list is what we’re getting in our multiplexes: a wildly divergent mix of budgets and outlooks, $300-million blockbusters like Avatar sharing space with shot-on-a-Handycam-for-$10,000 fare like Paranormal Activity. The future of filmmaking and distribution is in serious flux, and no one knows what it’s going to look like tomorrow. If The Blind Side and A Single Man get to hang out together at the Kodak Theatre for a night, well, that’s a pretty accurate snapshot of the biz circa now.

But I'm not in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I just watch at home, fuelled by bombastic opinions and a lot of junk food. And though there are horse races I care about – Carey Mulligan (An Education), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) and Streep all deserve to win best actress, and I fervently hope Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) becomes the first female best director – what I'm really dying to see is this: However will they fit this glorious madness into 180 minutes?