I feel as if I should start from the beginning. But first, some confessions. I have never taken a film class, a journalism class, or any class that could even be misconstrued as giving me some basis with which to write this blog. I just love movies and have a somewhat weird fascination with lists and award winning things (movies, books, music, etc.). I admit I'm not a strong writer and am absolutely terrible at reviewing things, at least when put on the spot. But I do hope this project will allow me to find a comfortable writing voice and carve out a reviewing niche I can call my own.
The idea of this blog is simple: review and comment on every Oscar winning and nominated film in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor and Actress, and Best Supporting Actor and Actress. Only in the last few weeks have I realized just how massive this project will likely be. For some silly reason, I thought this would be a unique idea and had visions of book deals, movie offers, guest TV appearances! And then with my mind made up I thought to Google and see if anyone had beaten me to the punch. Sure enough there are plenty of blogs out there devoted to the Oscars with their own projects of reviewing all of a certain category or multiple categories and all done way better than anything I could ever hope to do. Looking through all these blogs by people with degrees in English, Film Studies, Psychology, and sometimes more than one of these degrees at that, almost killed this thing before it even began. How could I even pretend I had something new or interesting to bring to an already overcrowded table? That is when I was reminded that I'm doing this project for my own enjoyment first and foremost. I don't have to compete with anyone, I just have to watch movies and write what I think about them and hope someone out there actually takes the time to read even a sentence of it.
And so here I am writing.
I can trace the beginning of this blog and my love affair with movies back to the summer between 6th and 7th grades. The American Film Institute released their Top 100 Movies list in 1998 and I happened to grab a sheet with the list from a local Hollywood Video store. I went through the list and unsurprisingly had watched very few on the list, maybe around 20 or so. And that was with counting movies I'd seen large parts of like The Silence of the Lambs but not actually the entire thing. So I convinced my parents to rent two movies every few days in hopes of finishing the list that summer. The first couple movies I remember getting were Casablanca and Singin' in the Rain and honestly I have no idea why I picked those first. But I was hooked and kept watching movies and even bought a magazine that profiled all the movies which I sadly don't have anymore. Eventually the summer came to an end and I wasn't even close to finished so the list got put aside as a lot of things I took a strong interest in around that time did. The following summer I decided to watch all the James Bond movies and actually finished that project (no blogging, though). So those two events pretty much started me down the path of actually enjoying and appreciating movies instead of just watching and forgetting them. I paid attention to the Oscars here and there but didn't really get back into movies until my first deployment to Iraq. My parents sent me tons and tons of movies that I'd watch which exposed me to all kinds of documentaries, B movies, straight to DVD stinkers, indie flicks, and the regular big budget and Oscar films. This continued when I went on my deployment to Afghanistan and again watched a ridiculous amount of movies. When I got back, I didn't have much to do so I began trying to watch all of the Best Picture nominees for 2008. Some I couldn't find online so I moved on to actor and actress and watched a few going back in years. Eventually I stopped this, too, (hopefully a pattern I will break!) and got on with living but still obsessed with reading everything Oscar related. Now flash forward to only a few weeks ago and I decided to make a spreadsheet of the 5 categories I could appreciate and highlighted those movies I have seen and those I haven't.
Which leads me into explaining how this thing will work (don't worry, I'm almost done). I plan on reviewing each year starting with the most recent and working my way back. It would be great to start with the 1st awards, but seeing as some of those movies are lost or partial prints or I would have to fly to UCLA and make an appointment with the library there, I figured starting with movies I could actually watch would be best and keep me from giving up after a week. So my next post will hopefully be on one of the 5 categories from the most recent ceremony with my complete reviews of those movies/performances and comments about the selections and whatever else I can think of. I'll pick my favorite of those nominated and we'll see if I share the same view as the Academy. Comments are enthusiastically welcomed and hopefully once I've started getting some years under my belt, I can elbow my way into the overcrowded table that is the blogosphere and actually have people reading this thing.
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