Hello Friends,
I'm Adam Arends, and I'd like to invite you to join me in this year's Oscar Challenge! What's the Oscar Challenge, you ask? Allow me to explain:
I'm a married father of two. The movies I see on a regular basis revolve around talking animals or cold princesses. Some of these are enjoyable. Some of these are not.
Last year, January 2013, when I read that the Academy Award nominees had been announced, I had a thought. I thought, "I haven't seen any of those movies." It could have ended there, BUT NO! I had another thought. I thought to myself, "Self," I thought, "you like movies, and you have opinions, you should see those movies, and form your own opinions so that when the Oscar show is on you can decide who's right and who is pandering to the masses, and/or corporate greed."
And so the Oscar Challenge was born! I had about 3 weeks to see all the Best Picture nominees. After asking my wife if I could leave the house late at night, and if I could get my allowance, I was off! Last year I managed to see 7 of the 9 best picture nominees before the Academy Awards ceremony and Ellen's selfie that shut down Twitter. I also managed to watch Cate Blanchett's performance in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine before the Oscars. The two Best Picture noms I didn't see last year were Captain Phillips, which I didn't expect to win, and it didn't, but was better than I expected, and Her, which for some inexplicable reason was not available for viewing during the month between the nomination announcement and the ceremony. This seems silly to me, and sadly appears to be the case for another interesting-looking film this year.
So, what's the deal this year, you ask?! Same deal, my friends! I have challenged myself to watch as many 2015 Best Picture, and otherwise Oscar-nominated films in one month as time, money and children will allow! I'll be reflecting on each film here in this space. If you like watching a bunch of movies in a short period of time, join me! After I post, I'd welcome discussion, thoughts, disagreements, recipes, and movie-poster-selfies here on my very own blog. Starting now!
If you don't feel like Googling just now, here are the 2015 Best Picture nominees, and how you can watch them:
Best Picture
American Sniper, theaters
Birdman, back in theaters
Boyhood, DVD released (redbox)
The Grand Budapest Hotel, DVD released, pay streaming services, HBO GO
The Imitation Game, theaters
Selma, theaters
The Theory of Everything, theaters
Whiplash, Not available for release until after the Oscars! So frustrating. If anyone knows how I can watch this, let me know!
I was able to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, so that will be my next review/post right here on this blog.
Here's a link to the Washington Post article and list of all nominees: href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/01/15/2015-oscar-nominations-complete-coverage/">
Some other films with nominations, but not Best Picture:
Foxcatcher, back in theaters. Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay
Wild, theaters. Actress, Supporting Actress
The two above I hope to see, as they were nominated for more than one major award. The next are films nominated for Best Actress, which I'll get to if life allows:
Still Alice, Limited release in theaters. Might not even have the option to see this one.
Gone Girl, It's in cheap theaters now, and was just released on DVD/pay streaming this week.
Two Days, One Night, This is a French film, and I haven't seen it in any theaters near me, but I hope it will be in the next few weeks.
There are a few others, I hope to get to, but I'll let you know.
One final note, I am aware that the Academy Awards are not the end-all, be-all for quality films in a year. However, they're a good place to start for a guy looking for a good excuse to see some pretty good movies and write about them. I hope you'll join me and share your thoughts on your favorite films of the year. If I hadn't just seen The Grand Budapest Hotel, I'd say the best I've seen this year was The LEGO Movie, and that just got snubbed in the Animated Feature category! Travesty.
Let's watch some movies!
