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In my explanation of the many, many ways that I incorrectly predicted this year's Oscar nominations, I didn't have much to say about the biggest surprise, the Best Picture nomination for Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Basically, my analysis came down to “What the Huckleberry? What the flim-flammin' rootin'-tootin' Huckleberry?” Beyond finally revealing that I am indeed a Southern plantation owner from the 1830s, I wasn't able to go terribly in depth about how the film made it into the nine-movie field, besting such favorites as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Bridesmaids, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

But now that I've taken some time to think about it and look back and see the path of this year's precursor season, well, I'm still totally baffled. How did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close go from being a massive critical disappointment to being a Best Picture nominee? In a normal year it would never happen, and it certainly doesn't make any sense.

At the beginning of the season, back before any of the precursors had had their say, ELIC was a strong contender to be nominated. It had the highest profile director in the race after Spielberg, Scorsese and Fincher, and it's based on an acclaimed novel. Plus, it featured four previous Oscar nominees in the cast, in addition to a former Kids Jeopardy Champion (considering I don't think that Sandra Bullock could win on Kids Jeopardy now, that's quite a feat). In my first breakdown of the Best Picture contenders I had ELIC as a frontrunner, but with a caveat: “right now it has a lot of potential, but because it hasn't been seen by anyone, we have no idea how receptive the Academy will be to it.” It was the big question mark in the race.

So when it was overlooked by the National Board of Review it immediately found itself on unsteady ground. While Hugo and The Tree of Life made their first pushes into serious contention, and The Artist, The Descendants and War Horse solidified their frontrunner status, ELIC's absence was a bad omen, especially since Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Ides of March put themselves into position to steal its momentum. When the critic's awards started to come in, the storm clouds gathered over ELIC's party. Suspicions that the film would be too shmaltzy seemed to be confirmed.

But there was still the Golden Globes, where the sentimentality of the film would most likely be appreciated. I predicted four nominations for ELIC, including Picture and Supporting Actor for von Sydow, but I would not have been surprised if the film had also scored nods for Daldry's direction and Roth's script. Instead it received none of those, getting completely shut out by the HFPA. The Broadcast Film Critics gave the film a boost by nominating it for Picture, Director, and Screenplay, and giving star Thomas Horn the award for Best Young Actor (beating out Hugo's Asa Butterfield and The Descendants' Shailene Woodley), but this was seen as an anomaly rather than a harbinger.

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