Oscars 2011

The blog is new, and I am lazy......very lazy.....and so this post comes 2 days after the Oscars have been announced!
So instead of predicting winners, scrutinizing nominees and talking about what was IMO sorely left out of the race, let this be just a mandatory Oscar post. I promise to follow it up with other posts about the great, wonderful movies of 2011 which I watched and why I would recommend them to you.

A list of all nominees can be seen here. The Oscars go to ......

BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR: The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
Any other nominee that would have made me happy too: Hugo or The Descendants

ACTOR in Leading Role: Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
Any other nominee that would have made me happy too: Frankly speaking...all were great!

ACTRESS in Leading Role: Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
Any other nominee that would have made me happy too: As is the case with actors.....I think every person nominated has done a great job. Problem is, I would have had perhaps 3 more nominees!!! A very very strong year for female performances. More of that coming up in the subsequent posts.

ACTOR and ACTRESS in Supporting Role: Christopher Plummer (Beginners) and Octavia Spencer (The Help)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Rango

Loved this win. Though have not seen all nominees, I loved this movie so much when I saw it that I instantly wanted it to win. Have heard great things about the other nominee Chico and Rita too. Need to catch them asap.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: A Separation

This was the only film that I have seen in this category and loved it so much that I was totally thrilled by the win and would have been heartbroken to see it lose out to any other. Left to me, I would probably have nominated it in all categories including best picture, best director, best actor, actress etc. Was glad to see a nomination in the screenplay, but lost out on it :( Read a blogpost on it here and here. 

BEST SHORT FILM (Live action and Animated): The Shore, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore repectively.

BEST SCREENPLAY (Original and Adapted): Midnight in Paris, The Descendants

Though A separation was a strong competitor, I am quite happy the Midnight in Paris won. Its an adorable movie (will talk about it soon in an upcoming post).

Others were technical awards, am glad Hugo bagged five of them, but also unhappy for many great movies that missed out.

So let the movie post marathon begin......

For the love of Books and Movies

My hubby and I are huge movie buffs. By huge I mean HUUUGEEE! :)  We love watching movies, discussing them, reading trivia about them and also spreading the word about what we enjoyed.

With Oscars 2012 just around the corner we were lucky that this week in St.Louis they were showing all the nominated Short films in both the animated category as well as in live-action. For me, it was the first time that I had an opportunity to watch these movies on big-screen. Back in India, you have to rely either on the pirated discs sold or watch them illegally online. The charm of the big screen and the enthusiasm of watching the first screenings of these shorts made me doubly excited.

Short films are a different experience than a full fledged movie. Ranging from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, they represent a whole story or an idea and need to be convincing and touching within the short time span. All of them were awesome, some were simply great!

I found one of them online and am putting a link here for you to see. The title of this animated short film is "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore".
According to the writer and director William Joyce, it is a story " inspired in equal measures by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books". It is a "poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story". And I totally agree with it.

I hope you get to see the short films somewhere. If they are playing somewhere near you, or will play in the near future, don't miss the opportunity to watch them.

Update 26th Feb 2012: TFFBoMML won the best animated short Oscar.... yayy!!