The Oscars

First of all, sorry it has been a week since a post. Something has happened that has really not put me in the mood to post, but I will update you all as soon as it is over. It should be soon. It is not health related, so no worries there.

Secondly, I want to wish a Happy Birthday to my beautiful wife! Happy birthday my love.

As you all know, Jess and I are big fans of the Academy Awards and we always see all five movie nominated for Best Picture and have done so for over 10 years, close to 15 actually. This year was no different and in fact, it is kind of cool that the birthday celebration and the awards show are on the same day!

So, here are my thoughts. When the nominations were announced, here is the ranking of how much I was looking forward to each film. I had already seen Benjamin Button and loved it, so I put that at number one simply because I loved it so much.

#1 Benjamin Button
#2 Slumdog Millionaire
#3 Milk
#4 Frost/Nixon
#5 The Reader

So now, after seeing them, in what order did I like them?

#1 is still Benjamin Button as I simply loved the movie. You can read my review here:
http://manuelsview.blogspot.com/2009/01/manuel-on-movies-10.html

#2 Milk was a really great movie. I thought I would like it as I do enjoy biopics, but I didn't know I would enjoy it as much as I did. The story of Harvey Milk is very touching and moving and Sean Penn was excellent. In fact, the whole cast was excellent and the film really captured the mood of the times. I love films where I can be entertained, enlightened, and learn a few things I didn't know all in one sitting. I almost put it ahead of Button, but in the end, I put it at #2 because it WAS just a biopic, and was simply retelling a story, whereas Button was something original (although based on a story) and just felt like something special. 9 out of 10

#3 I ended up liking The Reader a lot more than I figured I would. In fact, you can see it was last on my list of anticipation. But, this movie really surprised me, especially because I had heard so many bad things about it and heard outcry after outcry over how it was included and the overrated Dark Knight wasn't. But this was a very good movie. I thought it started as a great story of this older woman seducing a younger man, but once you find out the woman has a past and the secrets start to come out halfway through the picture, it gets even better. It is an emotional movie with some real moral questions. I ended up being really torn on some things, but I can't really say why without giving too much away. Kate Winslett was AMAZING in it and this is really her movie. 8 out of 10

#4 Slumdog Millionaire is kind of an overrated movie. Prior to seeing it, all I heard was how great this movie was and I was actually excited about seeing it. It wasn't a bad movie, but it just didn't live up to expectations. I LOVED how they told the story, with flashbacks about different times in the main character's life. I thought that part of the storytelling was brilliant. But, I just wasn't moved by the actually story. I didn't really CARE about the characters enough to be moved by it. It was a good story, but nothing special in my opinion. I didn't finish the moovie with a big smile on my face as it seems everyone else has. In the end, I have seen it, it was good, but I feel no urge to ever see it again. 7.5 out of 10

#5 Frost/Nixon is a tough film because the director, Ron Howard, had to basically make the audience care and stay awake for a 2 hour film centered around some interviews that had to do with politics. Sounds like a snoozer, but it wasn't really that bad. Langella (Skeletor!!) was great as Nixon and Sheen was very charasmatic as the interviewer Frost. And in fact, I was never bored and actually cared about what direction the story was going to go and it gave me some cheer moments weirdly enough. But in the end, it WAS a movie, a biopic if you will, centered around a set of interviews and great acting could only take this movie so far before the actual subject matter took over. This was a good film. Not a great film. I learned some stuff I didn't know, but I am sure I won't ever be seeing it again. 7 out of 10.

So, after all that, what WILL win? My bet is on Slumdog. Everyone seems to love the movie and it has some amazing momentum. I don't quite get it and years from now, I think it will go down as one of the overrated movies that took off because of hype, but isn't THAT great once you take a step back from everything and analyze it for what it was, simply a pretty good movie.