"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" was released last Christmas in the United States, slightly after the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One would like to suppose that the filmmakers realized the crassness of opening a 9/11-themed film any closer to the actual anniversary, but I'd bet good money the reason they held off for a few months was to grab a prime position in the Oscar race.

Featuring a precocious child with borderline Asperger's syndrome — and we all know how much the Academy likes to reward those playing the mentally challenged — and shamelessly proffering 9/11 with a con man's promise of catharsis and "closure," "Extremely Loud" has indeed managed to snap up an entirely undeserved Best Picture nomination.

"Extremely Loud" is directed by Stephen Daldry, whose past films have scored Oscars for both Nicole Kidman ("The Hours") and Kate Winslet ("The Reader"), so perhaps it was inevitable that expectations would be high for his latest weepy, which is based on the much-hyped novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. (Which nevertheless was trashed by reviewers at The New York Times, The New Yorker and New York Press, showing what the locals thought of Foer's not-so-magic-realist take on 9/11.)