First, they gave a Best Picture nod to “Winter’s Bone,” even though the smart money had been suggesting that Ben Affleck’s cops-and-robbers entertainment “The Town” would grab the last slot instead. I’m enjoying Affleck’s mid-career reinvention as a director of Bostonian crime stories (“Gone Baby Gone” wears much better on repeated viewings than Martin Scorsese’s Boston-accented Oscar winner “The Departed”), but “Winter’s Bone” was in a different league: Haunting and riveting, primal and genuinely surprising. Also, it’s precisely the kind of film that deserves some Oscar love: An actual little movie that could, with no-name stars and an obscure director, as opposed to notionally “little” movies like “The King’s Speech” and “Black Swan” that enter the lists with star power and studio muscle to spare.US NEWS PAPER
