An idea struck me. It was a very clever idea, but a task quite daunting. I have long been a film buff and have long been obsessed with the Oscars. I love trying to see every nominated film from each year and the ride it takes me on. I love having the perspective from having seen every film involved and being able to agree or disagree with the choices made for the awards. Sometimes I agree with who the Academy chooses to give the Oscars to, but sometimes I don’t. I love predicting who will win and I love complaining about who should have won.
This brought me to my idea. The idea is that I will try to watch every Best Picture nominee from the inception of the Academy Awards in 1927. As of 2009, there are 479 films that were nominated for Best Picture. I have seen 175 or about 37% of all of them, but with this project, I deem it only fair to re-watch those films. This could take years.
The plan is to watch one year’s nominees at a time. This won’t happen with every movie for every year, but for the most part, it is the fairest way to view these films with a critical eye. I will put myself in the moment of each year as if I were watching all of them during their time. I will try to apply the thoughts and events of the day to those films. I will consider why each film was nominated for that time. I will also give my opinion on if the Best Picture winner should have actually won and if not, which film. And if there was a movie from a certain year that wasn’t nominated, but I felt it should have won, then I will discuss that as well.
This will be a slow process. I am saying that out front because I do not want to burn myself out on this. I’m not giving myself a schedule to go by because I don’t want to get stressed. This will be a fun, yet difficult project.
I have identified every nominated movie and where I can find those movies (Netflix, Library). However, there is one main hurdle I have already encountered. There are 48 movies, spanning 21 separate years that I cannot locate. In those cases, I will watch what I can and try and not get too upset if I still am unable to watch those films. I will do what I can with what I can get and try and keep my head up. Chances are, if a film is unavailable, then it’s probably not the best.
I hope some of you will keep up with my progress and enjoy my blog. I will start with 1960 and go in no particular order.
