Bull Moose Strikes Back

For the second year in a row I have not seen any of the movies nominated for best picture when the nominations came out. Usually, I have seen at least two or three of the nominated pictures when nominations are announced and I would usually end up seeing four or all five of them by the time the Oscars are awarded.

Not this year. A lot of that is about finding sitters for the kids, a lot of that is I don’t find going to the theater very fun anymore since no one knows how to shut the hell up. But most of it is that when I do go to the theater I want to see a movie that’s not tedious.

And that’s what a lot of the movies nominated for best picture look to be. Tedious. The movies that I saw in the theater this year – Indiana Jones, Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, The Dark Knight, Quantum of Solace – I saw because they looked entertaining, not to be clubbed over the head.

Milk -  Here’s how I think of this: If Barney Frank had been murdered, would I want to see a movie called Frank? No. Plus for some reason the trailer makes it look like Sean Penn is playing the character like the one he plays in I Am Sam.

Frost/Nixon – This is the most tedious looking of all. Professor Althouse says, “I can see in the trailer the way Nixon’s own words have been edited and ham-acted into something they were not.” What happened to Opie? I used to look forward to his movies. Three of his last six movies before Frost/Nixon have been The Da Vinci Code, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and EdTV. Sheesh…

The Reader – The Holocaust and sex with young boys together at last! It’s like they put every theme that attracts award attention into a hat and picked out two. (Yeah, I know it was a book first, but I still get that feeling.)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – This is the one I want to see the most. That said, this is what we get when the star and director of Fight Club reunite? An overproduced Forrest Gump clone? The Age of Obama started rubbing off on Hollywood early.

Slumdog Millionaire - This is another one that I actually have some desire to see. I’ve heard it proclaimed to be the first movie of the Age of Obama. I guess I’ll need to see it to figure out what the hell that means.

I almost had myself convinced that The Dark Knight would get a nod. I don’t know, I thought that since it is the best movie I’ve seen in years, a game changer to an entire genre, and the second highest grossing move ever that it would get a nod. Nope.

It would have been – for lack of a better word – neat to have had the “first movie of the Age of Obama” in the same Best Picture category of the movie that was a metaphor for the Bush era. But it was not to be.

Meh. If I get a chance to get to the theater in the next few weeks, it will be to see Gran Torino or Taken. Those look like they might be entertaining with a nice little dose of testoserone in them. Movies like that might be hard to come by over the next few years.

On the up side Amy Adams, Kate Winslet, and Anne Hathaway are nominated. Break out the skimpy gowns.

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