The Oscars- My Way!

I have always been a big fan of the movies, but it is only over the past three or four years that things like box office results and the Oscars have become a part of daily conversation in my life.  This is due to the obsession my 14 year old son Will has with cinema.  He wants to be a film maker; he has been to a camp at the Tampa Bay Center for Performing Arts to study the craft; he has written a number of full length screenplays; and he sees a film most every weekend.  We love to argue about what is good, what is original, and what just flat out stinks!  We often disagree, but I have to admit he knows his stuff.  He picked all of the major (and many of the minor) Oscar winners last night, missing only on The Hurt Locker (which I did not see, but Will did) as best picture- he picked Avatar (or Smurfs In Space as I like to call it...I thought it was pretty good, but the highest grossing movie in history?  I don't get it.).  Me?  Well, I have my own ideas about  what was good at the movies in 2009, and I'll share my choices with you today. Please feel free to direct all complaints to youthguy07@aol.com . Enjoy this silliness and I will be back with more tales of youth ministry tomorrow!

Best Picture:  My ten finalists would have been Invictus, Up In the Air, Up!, The Hangover, Public Enemies, Paul Blart, Mall Cop (Yes, I said it- Paul Blart rocked!), Julie and Julia, It's Complicated, The Proposal and Inglourious Basterds.  My winner would have been Invictus, with Up! finishing a very close second.  The Hangover made me laugh so hard I hurt.  There needs to be a special category for comedies, since the Academy is clearly never going to honor them in this way.  If there was such a category, Old Dogs would be nominated too, and classics like Ghostbusters, Anchorman and Monty Python and the Holy Grail would have received their rightful accolades.

Worst Picture:  Halloween 2.  Nothing else was even close- and I saw All About Steve and Whatever Happened to the Morgan's? (or whatever it was called).  I loved the original Halloween movies, and even the "reboot" of the original Halloween was tolerable.  This was sooooooo bad...although Will says I am wrong!

Best Actress:  I love Sandra Bullock, but Meryl Streep should have won for the double header of Julie and Julia and It's Complicated.  Of course Sandra had The Proposal and The Blind Side- ah shoot, give them both the award!

Best Actor:  Morgan Freeman for playing Nelson Mandela in Invictus.  I can't imagine how difficult it is to portray a living legend, one who is known and adored by millions of people.  That has to be scary.  He had Mandela's speech patterns down pat.  I love George Clooney in Up In the Air (and the badly underrated Men Who Stare At Goats) but Freeman gets my vote.

Best Movie with Blue People:  Watchmen!  You didn't really think I was going to give Avatar any love, did ya?  :)

Best Reboot Ever:  Star Trek.  Absolutely perfect.

Worst Actress:  Megan Fox in everything she was in.  But does any male actually care?

Movie I Most Misjudged From the Trailers:  Sherlock Holmes.  I thought they were going to just KILL the characters of Holmes and Watson, making them more action heroes than intelligent detectives- but they really did pretty well.  I enjoyed the flick, much like I enjoyed Harry Potter, Wolverine and Transformers 2.  Those movies are just fun to watch.