Surprise, surprise.
I stopped blogging for practically forever. Just like the last time I had a huge gap in my writing, I
said I did not stop watching movies in the meantime. The same thing is true again. Except, now it’s been over a month and I’m WAY backlogged
here. Why do I do this to
myself? Oh yeah, because I always
start things with a lot of enthusiasm which quickly dies off. I need to work on that.
As I’m typing this, the Oscars are on. I’m really aggravated that I fell just
short of seeing all the best picture nominees. In the last month, I saw Life of Pi, Beasts of the Southern
Wild, and Argo. I had plans to see
the remaining two, which were Amour and Django Unchained, but those plans fell
through. I know that those two
will probably win every single award because those are the ones I didn’t
see. Oh well, I did the best that
I could. Amour was supposed to be
at Red River but was pushed back for some reason. Because I’m a little bit neurotic, I even emailed them about
a month ago to see what “TBA” meant on their website. The lady that runs the scheduling told me that it would be
there by February 15th, but it was pushed back to an undetermined
date for a undetermined reason.
The day I was supposed to see Django Unchained, I fell down the stairs
at Andy’s and wrecked my ankle.
Needless to say, I didn’t go that day. Then the day I rescheduled for ended up not working either
and that was the last day that this movie was playing anywhere in the
state.
I liked all of the last Oscar nominees that I saw. I was really dreading seeing Life of Pi
because it just did not look interesting to me at all. I have avoided reading the book for
years. It’s one of those books
that I felt like I was supposed to want to read, but never wanted to. I broke my own rule about not seeing a
movie of a book without having read the book. I ended up loving the movie and now I want to go back and
read the book. It was really
thought provoking and emotionally engaging. I thought the actor that played Pi was really
remarkable. Argo was sort of the
same way. I had about zero
interest in seeing it and was very pleasantly surprised. I thought the plot was interesting, the
acting was amazing, and the true tie to history pulled me in as well. Beasts of the Southern Wild was weird
as shit. I mean truly weird. The little girl, Quvenzhane Wallis, who
is the main character in the movie was really hypnotizing though and I can see
why she is the youngest best actress nominee in history. It was a movie I was glad I watched,
but did not LOVE it in the end. It
had really good elements, it was filmed in a beautiful way and really touching
in some parts, but like I said, it was weird as shit.
To check a few more former best picture winners of my list,
I have watched the following movies since my last blog:
The Sting - 1973
The Life of Emile Zola - 1937
Wings 1927/28
The Sting was really entertaining and only further
reinforced how big of a crush I have on 1970’s Robert Redford. I’m really glad I’m watching all these
movies, because the Sting is one of those movies that I always have heard
about, but never actually “felt” like watching. When I force myself to watch some of these, I realize that I
have actually been missing out on some great filmmaking.
The life of Emile Zola was….wow…..god awful. I absolutely hated it. I tried to watch it, no lie, at least
10 times. I fell asleep the first
9 times after about 10 minutes.
The 10th time, I watched it in chunks because I could not sit
through it straight. I thought it
was terribly unengaging, boring, and not particularly well done. I know it was 1937, and you’re probably
thinking I just don’t like old movies.
Well, that’s not true at all.
I love old movies. I just
didn’t love this old movie. Emile
Zola’s Wikipedia page even puts me to sleep. It says, “Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most
important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important
contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism…blah, blah, blah” That’s pretty much what the movie was
like. Borefest.
Wings was the first best picture winner of all time. It was a silent film about two pilots
during World War I. I watched this
with my dad, and although he will probably rat me out for falling asleep
towards the end, that does not change the fact that I did like this movie
overall. (In my defense, I have not
been sleeping well due to my hurt ankle, and I will blame my drowsiness on
that) Although there were some
hokey scenes in this movie that caused us to chuckle even though they were
supposed to be deadly serious, it was very entertaining and interesting to
watch a silent film in the midst of all these films. Filmmaking without sound is such a different experience and
requires a totally different type of acting (hence the point of the film, the
Artist.) There were some pretty
impressive shots in this film, especially for the technology of the time. I would recommend checking this out if
you’re into film history at all.
This blog is pretty lame-o, but I want to get back to
watching the Oscars. Until next
time. I think Slumdog Millionaire
is next on my cue. Bye for now!
My prediction: Lincoln will win best picture. Either that, or Argo, or Life of Pi, or Les Miserables, or Silver Linings Playbook. :)
