Which is all the more reason the show could use a few good penguins.

Un-bearable oversight
Not nominated for a best feature documentary Oscar was Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man" even though it was by far the best reviewed film in its genre this year.

That's no surprise, given this bear had long ago been put out of its misery. As detailed in a column here recently, a tiny, cartel-like group of documentarians aced it out of the running for an Oscar nomination by deciding that it wasn't one of the 15 films they decided should be eligible for the five nomination slots.

Underscoring the absurdity of the rules that led to that decision, Herzog was honored Saturday by the Directors Guild of America as the best documentary director.

It was the first DGA nomination, let alone win, for the 63-year-old German director, whose past films include "Fitzcarraldo" and "Aguirre: The Wrath of God."

And he isn't even a guild member.

Good Night and, finally, Good Luck
Three years ago, I wrote a front-page profile for The Times of Jim Bissell, a film production designer from Studio City whose work too often took him away from his family to Canada, where studios could reap financial incentives and cheap currencies that make runaway production a problem for Los Angeles.

Bissell had just completed work in Montreal on George Clooney's big-screen directorial debut, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." He had never been nominated for an Oscar, despite having worked on such major films as "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial" and "Bull Durham."

Having just turned 50 at the time, Bissell was clearly bothered by it, working in an industry where one is too often judged by the hardware on the mantle.

"I'm not quite sure what my industry reputation is," he told me at the time. "Maybe I'm still on the A-list, maybe I'm not. I'm probably at the low end of the A-list, maybe at the upper end of the B-list. I would be in much better shape if I had an Oscar nomination"

A decent guy in a business where there's a big shortage of them, Bissell on Tuesday scored his first Oscar nomination for art direction for Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck." And, it was shot in Los Angeles.