Saturday, January 17, 2015

Best Picture Blitz 2015, Part 1: It Begins

Woo-hoo! It's Oscar season!

Shiny!

You may recall that last year Precocious Daughter and I set out to watch all nine of the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Or eight of the nine: We mutually agreed to take a pass on the sex, drugs, and many, many uses of the F-word that was The Wolf of Wall Street. We're not prudes, but if there was any chance that I might glimpse Jonah Hill's bare bottom, I wanted no part of it.

Not entirely enchanted with his front, for that matter.
Sorry, Jonah.
Well, the Oscar nominations were announced this week, and eight movies are up for Best Picture. So PDaughter and I will be making the rounds again. With one major difference.

This year, we've already seen four of the nominated films.

Not sure if our taste in movies has improved, or if we're seeing more movies overall, or if the Oscar-bait films of the past year just happened to appeal to us, but we are way ahead of the game this time.

Here's the list, if you want to play along:

"American Sniper" 
"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"
"Boyhood" 
"The Grand Budapest Hotel" 
"The Imitation Game"
"Selma"
"The Theory of Everything"  
"Whiplash" 

We saw Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Theory of Everything when they came out, and we saw The Imitation Game just today. I've been dying to see Whiplash (it's about a drummer, people), and both of us have been wanting to see Birdman. That leaves just American Sniper and Selma as our "medicine" movies, but honestly, if they weren't quality movies they wouldn't be on the list, so it's all good.

Anyway, reviews of all eight coming over the next few weeks. The winners will be announced on February 22 and will most likely be a live-blog event on my Facebook page and Twitter feed.

I love to watch the Oscar telecast. Oh, and Neil Patrick Harris is hosting eeeeeeeeee.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
But at the heart of it all are the movies. And I can't wait to get as many nominees under my belt as possible in the next five weeks.

Join me!

4 comments:

  1. I've seen Grand Budapest. I need to step up my Oscar game.

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  2. While I don't have the slightest intention of watching any of these, you might want to google the online responses to American Sniper. Especially the death threats aimed at anyone less than enchanted with its warmongering, racism, and falsification of history.

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  3. I really don't like watching movies....which is sad because Chris likes nothing more than watching movies. Well, he likes very FEW things more than watching movies. ;) I heard from a few people that the people walking out of American Sniper were silent. The guys that served with him said the movie did a good job of portraying his life. I might watch it....or more than likely I will just read your reviews and be done with them all. ha!

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  4. Well, I've seen Birdman, and loved it, but I think it's a longshot for the Oscar. I suspect Keaton will win Best Actor, though. That'll be the Academy's way of saying, "Hey Mr. Mom/Batman, sorry we missed Pacific Heights and whatever that thing was where you were snorting coke off a dead hooker's ass."

    I really need to get busy, although I don't know if I can watch The Theory of Everything. I keep expecting Hawking to mug for the camera and say, "Oh behave!"

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