The Harry Potter movie adaptations have done just fine for themselves, ranging in quality from acceptable to pretty good, taking in enough cumulative box office money to turn Antartica into a dog colony. They haven't won many Academy Awards, though, not unless you count technical categories like Best Visual Effects and Best Score (which nobody does). There's been a dearth of those important acting and Best Picture nominations for a franchise that's had a permanent role in the theater for over a decade -- a streak that continued with the lack of big nominations for the final installment, 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Daniel Radcliffe, the erstwhile Potter, was not very pleased about that, telling the Guardian that the snub came down to a type of elitism.

“I don’t think the Oscars like commercial films, or kids’ films, unless they’re directed by Martin Scorsese," he said. "I was watching Hugo the other day and going, ‘Why is this nominated and we’re not?’ I was slightly miffed... There’s a certain amount of snobbery. It’s kind of disheartening. I never thought I’d care. But it would’ve been nice to have some recognition, just for the hours put in.”

Oh, Danny baby. Don't you know? The Oscars are a celebration of art, not commerce -- the triumph of the mind's eye over the hand's credit card, the expression of the inner muse and so forth. That's why movies like The Help and The Blind Side get nominated for Best Picture, not your emotionally telegraphed wizard orgy. There is an artistic reputation to maintain, come on. The "hours put in" don't really matter, either -- the final Lord of the Rings film got a slew of "thanks for playing Oscars," but really, that's mostly because Tolkien is some old white guy canonized shit while Rowling probably has to cool the jets on the merchandizing to let the series settle into what passes for modern respectability, and also because the Lord of the Rings movies are amazing and off with your head if you've never spent 11 hours in a row watching the extended editions waiting for Sam and Frodo to consummate their deep, deep bro-ffair and shedding a single tear when they're forced to part ways because life is hard like that. Tough luck, is what I'm saying; there's always room for spite at the bottom of the pile.