When the Academy Awards executives chose to extend the number of best picture nominations beyond five without doing the same with the best director, they created a situation.

Traditionally, the best director directs the best film. So by pushing the number of nominated films beyond five, the academy created the assumption that the “real” best picture nominations were the ones tied to nominated director.

This year, that assumption went up in flames. Who would have guessed that out of a field of nine, the “orphaned” best picture nominees would be “Django Unchained,” “Les Misérables,” “Zero Dark Thirty” or current front runner “Argo”? Who would have guessed that the sidelined directors would include critical darling Quentin Tarantino, recent winner Kathryn Bigelow and prodigal son Ben Affleck? Or that the directors invited to the party would include newcomer Benh Zeitlin or European veteran Michael Haneke?