“Toy Story 3” today scored Pixar’s second Best Picture nod in a row after last year’s “Up,” thanks to the expanded field of 10 nominees. But just like last year, its only hopes for a win are in the Best Animated Feature ghetto, where it will easily triumph over “How To Train Your Dragon” and the Scottish-French “The Illusionist.” (Because not enough films qualified for a field of five nominees, “Despicable Me” and “Tangled,” among others, ended up getting squeezed out).

That’s because “TS3” didn’t score a Best Director slot for Lee Unkrich, and no film has won Best Picture without the other nod since 1989’s “Driving Miss Daisy.” Disney has spent a fortune pursuing a Best Picture win for “TS3,” arguing it deserves an Oscar for being the concluding episode in a trilogy like Best Picture winner “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”

The flaw in this argument is that all three of those films were directed back-to-back by Peter Jackson, while Unkrich’s followed John Lassiter’s two original “Toy Story” films by more than a decade.