Sounds Delicious

The free world is now in the hands of a reasonable man, and I feel pretty good about that.  So let’s talk about the fucking oscars.

I tend to stay away from current movies.  My excuse/reason for this is some half-baked pretense about avoiding hype and allowing the passage of time to weed out overrated movies (it is really annoying to watch an over-hyped movie in a theatrical setting), but deep inside I know that it’s easy, cheap, and convenient to watch other things at home on my couch.  Also there are enough older films out there to overwhelm me anyway.  The problem with this lazy approach is that every year I watch the oscars and I speculate about who probably deserved what, or didn’t.  Last year, for instance, I knew “There Will Be Blood” was slightly better than “No Country for Old Men”, but I had to presume that “Atonement” did not deserve its place among the best picture nominees - a spot that I think should have gone to “The Assassination of Robert Ford By the Coward Robert Ford”.

But this year two of everybody’s favorite films, “Wall-E” and “The Dark Knight”, did not win best picture or best director nominations.  ”Wall-E” has its own category, of course - ‘best animated feature’ - which it will win as Pixar movies always do.  ”The Dark Knight” was simply snubbed, ostensibly because it’s an action movie.

So here I went to the trouble of dragging myself out of my house to go to a crowded and noisy theater to watch two very different movies that literally everyone was raving about; two movies that gave more than what was expected; two movies that succeeded on multiple levels; two movies that somehow appealed to every member of a family; two movies that lived up to their boundless hype; two movies that I subsequently loved; and I will yet again be watching an Academy Awards ceremony in which I have not seen any of the nominees in the top categories.

My bitter presumptions are already piling up, for instance that I’m pretty sure Christopher Nolan could direct a better movie than “The Reader” with his eyes closed.  But I don’t know that for sure.  If “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” got a best picture nomination not for quality but because it is a certain type of movie - and if, conversely, “The Dark Knight” wasn’t nominated simply because it is a different type of movie - than winning an oscar should be equivalent to winning “Most Snack-alicious Bear Claw” at a vending machine suppliers convention.  But I don’t know that for sure.  Ghetto-izing “Wall-E” into a lesser category ignores how much the film transcends its own genre, and in ignoring “Wall-E” the Academy reveals itself as too rigid and pretentious to appreciate a minor revolution in the industry.  But I don’t know that for sure.  I need to check out what this Academy is raving about.  I need to see these movies.

In an attempt to - for once - know what I’m talking about, I’ve decided to attempt to see all the nominees in all the major categories (film, director, actor, actress, supporting, screenplays; if I have time I’ll watch the straw nominees in Wall-E’s category) between now and the oscars.  That’s 16 movies in 29 days.  I think I can do it.  

 Some of them are out on DVD, right?  And “Tropic Thunder” is actually supposed to be pretty good.

Alexander “Truly” Scrumptious 

Read about my progress here