The recent decision of the Academy’s documentary committee not to shortlist Gabe Polsky‘s Red Army is the biggest WTF of the award season thus far. Everyone with a semblance of taste (myself included) has been praising this soulful heartland doc since last May’s Cannes Film Festival. Why didn’t it make the cut? Last night Sony Pictures Classic’s Tom Bernard pointed the finger at Academy dinosaurs who harbor negative Kennedy-era feelings about the Russians, and who probably don’t have clue #1 who or what Pussy Riot is.

“It’s a sign of some really old people in the documentary area of the Academy,” Bernard said during a distribution panel at the Whistler Film Festival. The doc branch, he said, includes “a lot of people who are really up in their years.”

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union upon the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.” — JFK in his Cuban Missile Crisis speech.

“I hope the Russians love their children too.” — from Sting’s mid”80s song “Russians.”