This is my first ever blog post. Special thanks to my friend, Jane, for suggesting we dish on the movies. Jane and I went to high school together and re-kindled our friendship through Facebook, discovering we both love watching movies. I have been a moviephile forever, and thankfully I have a husband who shares my passion for the cinema.
Ray and I double-dipped at the movies today. We saw "The Last Station" and "A Single Man". A Single Man was by far the better movie. Colin Firth's performance was highly deserving of an Oscar nomination. Surprisingly, Helen Mirren over-acted in her role as Countess Tolstoy in The Last Station, which makes me question the direction she was given. The only performance worth watching was that of James McAvoy, who sported a haircut and facial hair reminiscent of Russell Crowe in Gladiator (one of my favorite movies).
We watched "A Serious Man" tonight. I am not a huge Coen Brothers fan, and this movie did nothing to change my opinion. While I don't want to give away anything, let's just say the movie's ending was extremely frustrating...
As of tonight, we have seen 7 of the 10 Best Picture nominees - we haven't seen The Blind Side, Precious, or An Education, which we hope to rectify next weekend. We have seen all 5 Best Actor nominees, 3 of the 5 Best Actress nominees and 4 of the 5 Best Director nominees.
As of right now, here are my Oscar should/will win predictions:
Best Movie: The Hurt Locker should win best picture, but $2 billion in worldwide revenue is hard to ignore in these trying economic times, so I think Hollywood will reward the highly inventive Avatar with the gold statue.
Best Actor: Jeff Bridges should and will win the Oscar for his performance in Crazy Heart. As a washed up, alcoholic country singer, no one gave a more multi-layered performance than he did. I also think Hollywood will recognize his long career with the prize that has thus far eluded him.
Best Actress: I think Meryl Streep was outstanding as Julia Child, but Sandra Bullock will win for her performance in The Blind Side. Again, money talks and Ms. Bullock raked in over $500 million this year with her performances in The Proposal and The Blind Side.
Best Director: I would award Kathryn Bigelow the statue for her thought-provoking and sensitive direction of The Hurt Locker, but James Cameron will probably win the best director award for Avatar. I think anyone who takes 10 years to make a 3-hour movie deserves the award, for sheer tenacity if nothing else. Besides which, Avatar is an excellent movie.
I will defer on Best Supporting Actor and Actress categories to a later post.
All in all, I think the 2009 movies were quite good and reached a very broad audience, offering something for the kiddies (Up) all the way to the senior citizens (Julie and Julia). Bravo to Hollywood for getting us to continue to go to the movies!
Geri
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