But yes, my general point here is that an actor or a film can have an enormous impact on film history without anything to do with the Oscars or any other fickle/politically driven awards show.
And that's the key point. The process is completely subjective and probably in many cases, politically driven. It is pretty much an accepted fact that Crash won (and BBM didn't) because of a variety of behind the scenes campaigns that were waged. Keep in mind, too, that once a person is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, they are a member for life and get all the voting privileges. Members openly admit that they haven't seen movies, but they vote for them; they haven't seen the performances of all the actors/actresses, but they vote anyway. And then you get into the categories where a member might not have any knowledge--and they vote on that too!
It only takes two minutes of Googling to find dozens of Academy "mistakes" like those you mentioned, Amanda. They have been making these mistakes since the inception of the Awards. Clearly, the Academy doesn't see these problems as mistakes, otherwise, you might assume they'd want to fix it, right? But since they aren't changing anything, they'll just keep on doing what they're doing, with the outcome that the Awards, overall, become less and less relevant to more and more people, including those in the industry.
This is why I have read many comments that the Guild Awards (Actors, Directors, Writers, etc) are more representative. Actors are voting for actors; directors vote for directors, etc. The results I have seen from these awards are more "satisfying" in that I feel like the proper winners are being selected.
L