“They are real studies about outsiders trying to deal with the complicated life that we have — whether they’re driven by greed, like the (Brolin) character in No Country for Old Men, or whether they’re like this young girl, Juno, just trying to make her way through her problems.”

If these pictures place outsiders at the heart of their stories, that is hardly surprising, given that outsiders themselves have made the films.

There are no veterans of the Hollywood establishment behind this year’s best picture or best director lineup: no Clint Eastwoods or Steven Spielbergs or Martin Scorseses. Instead, we have a group of filmmakers tilting at the system, who could represent the next wave of Hollywood filmmaking.

Four of the director nominees are at the very beginning of their careers: This is Gilroy’s first time directing, Reitman’s second, Julian Schnabel’s third (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and Anderson’s fifth. Only the Coen brothers — once quintessential outsiders — are veterans, a notion that might tweak their anarchic sense of humor. And even Atonement, the only picture nominee that didn’t garner a directing nomination, was helmed by a sophomore filmmaker. Contrast that with last year, when veterans Eastwood (Letters From Iwo Jima) and Stephen Frears (The Queen) competed in the director category with Scorsese, the eventual winner for The Departed.

There’s another striking feature of this year’s lineup. In contrast to the majority of last year’s nominees, many of this year’s directors also wrote their own screenplays, including Gilroy, Anderson and the Coens themselves. And all (except for Reitman) had approval of the final cut.

... contd.