Pre-Oscar musings

Some of you may be surprised to hear that I watch the Oscars religiously every year, have probably only missed a few since I was very young. It's true that they often aren't accurate, in my and many others' opinions, in their choice of award recipients, but I'm still addicted to the show, comparing it to past years in terms of hosts, etc. I also have to confess that I like seeing what everyone's wearing, though I hate the ubiquitous question asked by fawning media reps, "Who are you wearing?" Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin co-host this year, as I really enjoyed the two of them in "It's complicated". But on to my thoughts about this year's nominees.

First I have to say that I haven't seen and may not ever see a number of the films nominated in either major or less major categories. This is because the story, actors, type of film or director doesn't interest me, but sometimes I eventually become curious and decide to see such a film anyway. Here are the ones in major categories on that list this year:

Crazy Heart, The Hurt Locker, The Lovely Bones, Inglourious Basterds, The Blind Side, Precious, Nine, Up, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Sherlock Holmes, District 9, A Serious Man. I realize that some of these may be favourites of yours for this year. The ones I'm most likely to see out of curiousity are The Hurt Locker, Precious and Sherlock Holmes. I also haven't seen most of the foreign films or documentaries because I haven't had the opportunity.

Here are my favourite films from those nominated for various things, and I predict that none of them, with the exception of "Avatar" and possibly "Up in the Air", will get any of the major awards:

Up in the Air, A Single Man, Invictus, Avatar, An Education, Julie and Julia in no particular order. I also very much liked "The Last Station" and "The Young Victoria" but not as much. I loved "The Informant" and thought Matt Damon deserved a best actor nomination for his performance, though he was also excellent in "Invictus". Another left-out nomination, in my opinion, is Julianne Moore for her role in "A Single Man". I'm still waiting for "The Messenger" to be shown here. You can see my assessments of the films on this list in my "Film Reviews 2009" document.

I'm not giving any predictions on winners, but I'll probably write something after this Sunday's show.