The Oscars are only 3 weeks away!

The Oscar nominees came out almost 2 weeks ago, and Daryl and I were dismayed that we were not ahead of the game in watching the Oscar nominees for Best Picture. There are 9 (odd isn't it?) nominees this year  and when the nominees came out we had only seen one, boo! But we are still determined, and we'll see how well we can do. I wanted to write up the ones that we've now seen, so that I'm not having a hard time remembering them all later. Between movies and flying through books already this year (see my list on the right- but only shows on the blog), there's a lot of fiction in my mind. Will need to take a break from both in a while methinks.

   Ok well first up I'll talk about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo based on the Swedish book of the same name by Stieg Larsson. I was really excited to see this movie as I've read the books, and have also seen the Swedish version of the movie. I was looking forward to seeing how Hollywood would do and I was pleasantly surprised. This is about journalist Mikael Blomkvist being hired to solve the mystery of a murder that occurred 40 years ago. Looking back on the books it was actually my least favourite, mostly because the real story doesn't start until the second book, the first is really mainly just character development. The movie stayed more true to the book than the Swedish version, but that just made this movie even longer. I wasn't complaining, but compared to the story that takes off in the second, this one does seem a bit slow. This is justly nominated for Rooney Mara's portrayal of Lisbeth Salander (for BA), Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Editing and Mixing. I'm actaully surprised that Original Score wasn't included there though. Trent Reznor did the Score and it was noticably excellent, as was his work that he won an Oscar for last year in The Social Network. A snub there I do believe. I don't know if it will win anything, but Rooney Mara did a great job but I liked Noomi Rapace's version better. I MUCH preferred Daniel Craig as Michael than the Swedish version though.

 The Artist was a beautiful and creative movie. I would describe it as an homage to silent film. It is set in 1927 and around the silent film industry and one actor George Valentin, played so well by Jean Dujardin. I was so skeptical about this movie. Whenever a movie gets as much accolades as this one has I start to worry that its being set up for failure (at least with me). But I just loved it. It was cute, quirky, SMART use of today's technology to make it look so genuine. From the nominees I've seen, this completely blew the competition out of the water for Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design (oh the costumes!), Film Editing and Music Original Score (which was ALL you hear the whole movie-awesome). I was just happy after watching this movie, but also couldn't help noticing how the theme could be applied to today's change in movies from 2D to 3D. I didn't realize how much I loved this movie till I started writing this! Oh how I'd love to be a movie extra for a movie set in the 20's :) As well it is nominated for Best Picture which it has a great shot at.

The Descendants is another Best Picture nominee starring nominee George Clooney (BA) and (an overlooked IMO) Shailene Woodley as his daughter. This takes place in Hawaii and is titled as such because the lead characters are descendants of an American man and a Hawaiian Princess from the 1800's, and who still hold in trust the ownership of a huge parcel of land on Kauai. The movie though is centered around the lead character's wife who is in a coma. And how very real aspects of what their relationship was is effected by her condition. I thought this was actually a very real and raw movie. It was really very good, but is nominated with some tough competition that I'm not sure it can win against. Maybe Writing-Adapted, so far from the ones I've seen, and George for BA.

Ok so that's where I'm at. We still have 5 movies to see from the main category, ack! Don't know if we can do it!