Saturday, January 25, 2014

And the Oscar goes to . . .


One of the items on my 50 before 50 list is to watch all the movies that have won the Academy Award for "Best Picture." To begin, I dug up a list of them. There are 85 on the list. As of yesterday morning, I had seen 31 of the movies, which are crossed out below. (I've also given them my ranking on a scale of 5 stars.) As of yesterday evening, I've now seen 32. With 53 movies left to watch, I'm going to need to watch 2-3 per month in order to check this off my 50/50 list. Time to get crackin'!

The first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, "Wings" is a silent film. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it is also a looooooong film. Ufdah.  The basic plot (from IMDB) is: "Two young men, one rich, one middle class, who are in love with the same woman, become fighter pilots in World War I." I was bored through 85% of it. Lots of long, dramatic reaction shots - tons of footage of planes flying and crashing - and then, of course, there is all that reading that has to happen if I'm to follow the plot. When I watch movies, I usually crochet, because then I feel like I'm not wasting time. This was kind of hard to do because of, you know, the reading!

Though I was kind of annoyed (for lack of a better word) watching the movie, it managed to surprise me, in the end. There was quite an unexpected twist. If the movie were made today, it could be well done with a running time of 1:30, but the budget would be through the roof because of all the flying scenes required. I give "Wings" 2/5 stars.

I have "The Broadway Melody" ordered from the library to watch next. I think this will be an interesting experiment. When I was checking off the movies I'd seen, I was surprised - both at those I'd already seen, and those I haven't. I know the plot to Rocky and Kramer vs. Kramer, but have never actually watched them.

1927/1928 - "Wings" 1/24/2014 **




















































































2012 - "Argo" 2/5/14 ****

2013 - "12 Years a Slave" 3/9/2014 ***

1 comment:

  1. Wow... There are some fantastic movies still left on your list. I'm envious that you get to that "first time" experience

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