Everyone, including the writer/director, producer, and stars of the film, had figured Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone a long shot in all the Academy Awards categories for which it was nominated last night–Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay (from the novel by Daniel Woodrell). Nevertheless, it was particularly depressing to see this riveting narrative of a young woman searching for her father, a parole-jumping meth batcher in rural Missouri, lose the Best Adapted Screenplay prize to Aaron Sorkin’s script for The Social Network.
The latter was a smart movie, largely because