Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate, says, “This year's Oscar line-up is once again rife with religious references, and the entertainment industry may be overtaking religious institutions as the prime mythmakers and ritual producers in a society where the 'nones' are on the rise.”

Plate, in an evaluation of many of the year’s films, from Beasts of the Southern Wild and Life of Pi to Quentin Tarantino's “Blaxploitation-meets-spaghetti-western” Django Unchained, declares his own awards, “the Religious Oscars 2012:”
Best Creation of Mythology: (tie) Beasts of the Southern Wild and Cloud  
                                                               Atlas  
Best Re-use of Ritual: The Sessions
Best Iconography: Samsara
Best Ethical Compunction: Zero Dark Thirty
Best Sense of the Sacred in the Everyday: Amour
Best Hero's Journey: Brave
Best Warning about the Excesses of Religion: The Master