I was pleased to see that my favorite film of 2010, Danny Boyle‘s magnificent and exhilarating “127 Hours” got both a Best Picture and a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination today, from the Producers’ Guild and the Writers’ Guild respectively. The film is so vivid and overwhelming and, in the end, joyous, that it seemed to me a lock for all the major Oscar nominations when I saw it last fall.

But I didn’t count on the wuss factor: People are just scared to see it. Smart people, people who (supposedly) care about great art suddenly sound like fifth-grade girls when they talk about it. It’s alarming, bordering on sickening, that such a towering cinematic achievement gets a tiny audience in theaters when well-meaning but trivial, sitcom-level stuff like “The Kids Are All Right” manages to scare up a few viewers. “127 Hours” has already just about disappeared from theaters but if it gets well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Picture, Actor, Director and Screenplay at least it will go in the books as a film that matters.