2013, Tom Shone, Oscar nominations pull a surprise by showing some taste – but will it last? (in The Guardian, 11 January 2013)
Perhaps the best news to come out of the nominations was the brightened box-office prospects for such films as Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, a dazzling piece of magic realism pieced together from just $1.8m, some rusty bathtubs and whatever Louisiana bric-a-brac its youthful collective of film-makers could lay their hands on.