Analog Thoughts on a Digital Age

Friday, February 01, 2008

My Official Oscar Nomination Reviews


I've been pondering on doing another review for a great while now, but I thought I would give it some for the movies to stew in my brain so I could give them a fair assessment. Plus it would be great exercise for my severely atrophied writing skills.

The writer's strike is still going on and it is directly affecting our business at the office (we transcribe and caption US shows), It would be nice if this all could end so I don’t have to go through the internet and read about what Britney ate for breakfast and that she had her 345th breakdown while driving her newly bought (and dented) Mercedes to a school where she was going to pick up her kids she couldn’t even legally see. I miss writing about how crappy some movies and TV shows are.

Now we see that the Academy Awards are just around the corner and that the strike may take this thing down as it did the Golden Globes, part of me thinks "Heck, we don’t need the Oscars." We don’t need this over-produced pomposity that is more of a jewel-encrusted, botox-injected pseudo-fashion show smorgasbord rather than an official cultural event (like the SAGs were this year). But another part of me thinks, "I need to see what they are going to do to this year's opening sketch".

Anyhoo, after I saw the nominees this year, I have to admit. I was satisfied with the choices. There were definitely good movies to begin with. Sure I preferred some that were not included, but this year's nominees for Best Picture were definitely, in my opinion, the best of the year.

I sought out these movies at my local DVD pirate bay and found a copy for all of them except one. I think we all can agree that the quality and packaging for pirated DVDs as of late has greatly diminished, and it sucks especially for committed collectors like myself, But I couldn't pass of the opportunity of not being able to see these movies first and imposing my pompous opinion to the world like I normally do in this blog.

The only movie without a review in this list of Oscar noms is There Will Be Blood, and word is it is the best of the bunch. But I have yet to see it. But these are the ones I've seen...