Oscar nominations pull a surprise by showing some taste – but will it last?

Maybe we'll never know what possessed the Academy to do what they just did. Was it the new, fast-forwarded schedule, which freed them from marching in lock-step with their Guild precursors? Glitches in the new online voting system? Or maybe it was sheer irritation at the four solid months of feverish speculation from Oscarologists as to what they would do? A counter-backlash against the forces of backlash? Whatever the reason, Thursday's nominations, which caught everybody by surprise, have essentially restarted the Oscar race from zero.

No longer is the best picture going to be a toss-up between that troika of national-historical heavies: Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty. Instead, a warm welcome back for Life of Pi, widely dismissed by many as "this year's Hugo" but this column's dark-horse pick from October.

Also a big hand for Silver Linings Playbook, an exuberant modern screwball comedy we had, in an unseemly fit of cynicism, deemed "too entertaining" for Academy voters. Ahem. And of course, everyone's frontrunner, Lincoln, whose box-office – $145m domestically, and still to open internationally – could be the thing to push Spielberg's film over the finishing line, as we said back in November.

Perhaps the best news to come out of the nominations was the brightened box-office prospects for such films as Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, a dazzling piece of magic realism pieced together from just $1.8m, some rusty bathtubs and whatever Louisiana bric-a-brac its youthful collective of film-makers could lay their hands on; and for Michael Haneke's Amour, a lovely meditation on the death of loved ones, which secured not only nods for best director and best picture but also best actress for Emmanuelle Riva, thus ensuring some class for February's proceedings.

Add in nominations for Django Unchained, The Master and Moonrise Kingdom, and the Academy Awards look dangerously close to being about rewarding the actual best films of the year. Don't tell anyone. As the Playlist commented:

It's not like they've nominated The Turin Horse or anything, but you still have a micro-budget post-Katrina magic realist indie starring no one they've ever heard of, a violent slavesploitation Western, a 3D meditation on religion, the least Spielbergian film Steven Spielberg has ever made, a near-three-hour spy procedural, and a Michael Goddamn Haneke film. (And for those claiming Amour is Haneke's "safest" film, that's like saying that The Island is Michael Bay's least explode-y film – it's still an incredibly tough, bruising watch, more so than anything else in recent Oscar memory). Even the dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has David O Russell's rough-edged feel to it, and the starry musical Les Miserables took the risk of having the cast sing live on set … There are plenty of things wrong with the Academy and their tastes, but in a year where they nominated Michael Haneke (twice!), Benh Zeitlin, Emmanuelle Riva, and three actors from The Master, you've got to give them a little credit.

You had us until you tried to sell Les Mis as this year's answer to mumblecore.

The whole idea of an Academy Awards showing some taste may be too much for some. Indeed, there is already chatter that it will not – nay, cannot and should not – last. Deadline Hollywood have already pronounced Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone's announcement broadcast "the meanest ever". There are also grumbles that by knocking Argo and Zero Dark Thirty out of contention, the Academy have essentially sewn the whole thing up for Steven Spielberg. Or as Vulture put it: can anything beat Lincoln now?

Not so fast. Lincoln has its weaknesses. It is on the talky side, slow to get going and while it has attracted praise from critics for being the least Spielbergian for his films – you feel the director flattening himself against the wall to let Day-Lewis and Kushner through – it's unclear whether the Academy will view this as self-effacingly noble or frustratingly self-abnegatory.

Remember also the sleeping giant of the Oscar season, now awoken and looking for his breakfast: Harvey Weinstein, whose tireless campaigning has now set up Silver Linings Playbook with a running flush of nominations – best director, editing, and actors in all the main categories, a feat not seen since Reds in 1981.

The last time Weinstein went up against Spielberg it was 1999, and Saving Private Ryan was pipped to the post by Shakespeare in Love. Another decade, another history lesson from Spielberg, another crowd-pleaser from Weinstein. The world rubs its hands, looks fiendishly on.