2011 Academy Award Best Picture Nominees
Every year I attempt to watch all of the Academy Award Best Picture Nominees prior to the Oscars broadcast. It is often a challenge as some of the films are no longer in theaters and the DVD has not been released. It has also gotten more difficult as there are now 10 nominees instead of the 5 there were a few years ago.
Today I completed the task of watching all 10 Best Picture Nominees. It's been fun and I've gotten to watch some excellent movies. Here is my take of the 10 nominees.
True Grit
One of my favorites of the bunch. Excellent performances by Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Hailee Steinfeld. I liked that this closely followed the book. I enjoyed every minute of it.
The King's Speech
I throughly enjoyed this movie. I knew nothing about King George VI and did not know this was a true story going into it. Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were all excellent in this. I expect Colin Firth to win for best actor and would not be surprised if Geoffrey Rush won best supporting actor. I thought he was excellent.
Winter's Bone
I knew nothing about this movie going into it. I enjoyed it because it took me into a world I didn't know existed. I thought it was a somewhat depressing movie and it didn't really stick with me after watching, but I was fascinated while watching. It was well done but will not win the Best Picture award
Black Swan
I am not really a fan of psychological thrillers and while this movie was well done it was not one of my favorites. I didn't not enjoy watching scenes that later turned out to just be Natalie Portman's fantasy/dreams. Natalie Portman was excellent in this and I expect her to win Best Actress.
The Fighter
The story didn't really interest me but I thought the acting was excellent. I expect Christian Bale to win Best Supporting Actor.
Inception
I enjoyed this movie because it was so unique and made you think. So few movies do that nowadays. Besides being unique though I'm not sure it is Best Picture caliber.
The Kids Are All Right
I was bored by this movie. It was only mildly interesting and I'm really surprised by all the critical acclaim it has received.
127 Hours
I knew a lot about this event and knew how it ended so I wasn't sure how you could make an entire movie out of this single event. The resulting movie was well done and kept me entertained. Some of the choices the director made irritated me (the split screen views) but overall it was very well done.
The Social Network
I enjoyed this movie but I don't think is is Best Picture material. It was well done, well acted, but at the end of the day it was telling the story about an individual that I didn't find that interesting.
Toy Story 3
The story was very well done and evoked a lot of emotion (I admit I teared up at the end). It won't win Best Picture, but it was definitely one of the top 10 movies of the year.
So that's my take on all 10. I think True Grit or The King's Speech should win. Looking forward to watching the Oscars this weekend to find out.
Changes to this Blog
I have a lot of varied interests, photography, woodworking, filmmaking, etc. as well as multiple businesses. In the past I have had multiple blogs for each of these interests. The idea was if your interest was photography you would be more likely to follow my blog if it stuck to the photography topic.
In theory this works great, but in practice it breaks down because I'm just too busy to have a constant stream of posts about any one topic.
So I have decided to combine everything and have a single repository for all my thoughts. So from henceforth this blog will contain information about all of interests and perhaps occasionally a random personal opinion. I will try to categorize all my posts so if you are only interested in a single topic you can filter the posts to only show that topic.
With this change I expect to make more frequent posts and hopefully supply useful information.
Let me know what you think. Any and all feedback is welcome.
My First Post
Welcome to my blog. I will mainly use this blog to post about my current obsession which is photography. I may occasionally throw in something related to woodworking or the world in general. Have to see how it goes.
My goal is to have each bit carefully handcrafted for your reading pleasure.