This past Saturday the Oscar Best Picture Marathon rode into town. Like a kid on Christmas I was amped with anticipation. I was also up before the sun at the hour of 5 AM. Nothing, not hell nor high water nor a woman’s scorn, was going to stop me from going. There was popcorn to be eaten and movies to be watched.

Though I would’ve preferred to see a couple different movies in the list, the nominees this year were a solid bunch. I would go so far as to say that they were much better overall than last year’s group, which included Michael Clayton and Juno. While both were good movies in their own respects, I don’t believe they were Oscar material.

Without further adieu, let’s get to the movies. We’ll beging with a brief review of each and see where that takes us.

Milk – Gus Van Sant

Milk was, hands down, my favorite movie of the day. A biopic with the tragedy of an opera, allusions to the struggle of the Jews in Nazi Germany, and archival footage mixed in with the film to provide a grittiness and realism that is absent from most biopics. It also contains a harrowing assassination sequence that you will not soon forget (not exactly a spoiler, since this film is based on true events).

Harvey Milk’s one goal was to bring people together to fight against bigotry and persecution and he did just that. However, for someone who was able to bring together different groups of people, he was certainly good at alienating people. A list that includes his two boyfriends, one who left him and one who hanged himself, and his assassin, Dan White.

Memorable Scene: The assassination of Harvey Milk by the coward Dan White.

Rating: A

The Reader – Stephen Daldry

Sex and reading, who could ask for more? This movie boils down to a battle against illiteracy. Well ,maybe that and the consequences of keeping secrets. It begins with a woman helping a boy who has become sick after he gets well he finds her and thanks her for helping him. Then the cougar comes out and it becomes a teenage boy’s fantasy, until one day the cougar up and leaves.

Years pass and by. He’s now a law school student and she turns out to be a Nazi war criminal. Her shame in not being able to read causes her to fess up to something she didn’t do, but is willing to pay the price for in order to not reveal that she can’t read or write. After some more time passes he comes up with the idea to do a books-on-tape thing and sends her all the stories he read to her as a teen. This leads to her learning to read and write.

Memorable Scene: Kate Winslett swimming in the river.

Rating: B

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – David Fincher

First things first, the whole aging backwards can be written off as a gimmick, but at the same time it provides a juxtaposition of age and youth that boils down to the fact that we begin and end life in diapers. It also showcases our desires to be older when we’re younger and younger when we’re older. It’s in these elements that the film builds its power.

Benjamin’s tale is a familiar one: he had issues with walking as a kid, a lifelong female friend who would later bear his seed, worked on a boat, wandered around an empty bunch of rooms after being inexplicably left by a woman, and heeded advice from his mother about not knowing where life is going to present to you. So familiar that I could swear there was another movie that had these same things in it.

Memorable Scene: Kamikaze tugboat versus U-boat.

Rating: B+

Slumdog Millionaire – Danny Boyle

Slumdog Millionaire starts off with a question and ends with the answer to that question. In between we get to see how the main character came to know the answers to the questions he’s correctly answered on the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. We get to know this because he’s been suspected of cheating and must explain himself being that he’s nothing more than a slumdog. This slumdog has greater aspirations than money for being on this particular show and I don’t blame him because Fried Pinto would be well worth the trouble.

Danny Boyle’s movie is good but not as grand as I expected. From the get go I couldn’t help but draw parallels to two of his previous movies, Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, respectively. Now these parallels are only based on two scenes which deal with the answers to the first two questions. Question 1 finds our hero as a child who’s about to jump into a world of shit, literally, after he’s locked in a bathroom (if you can even call it that) by his brother. Question 2 finds an angry horde attacking the slums where he grew up and they were definitely filled with rage. Other movies/television shows that I couldn’t help but draw similarities to include:

City of God (slums)

The Darjeeling Limited (train riding in India)

The Usual Suspects (interrogation)

24 (torture interrogation)

Scarface (some gangster shit)

Memorable Scene: Kid jumping into the shit hole and running to get an autograph.

Rating: B+

Frost/Nixon – Ron Howard

Frost/Nixon is as concerned with the internal struggles of its main characters as it is with the struggle between them. Talk show host Frost is trying to gain some journalistic credibility by landing a serious interview with ex-President Richard Nixon. At least he opted not to open Al Capone’s Vault. Nixon is trying to regain some status with the American public. Only one man can claim victory.

The bell rings and the fight is on. In the first round Nixon comes out the obvious winner, providing rambling answers while Frost sits there dumbfounded. Round two is a little less one sided. Frost battles back vigilanty, but confidence in his side of the ring is low. Tricky Dick once again takes a decisvie victory in round three, one character comments that he overheard two guys saying that they would’ve voted for Nixon based on his answers. Then we come to the fourth and final round, both fighters are battle hardened, they know their futures rely on the outcome of this round and this round alone. The topic Watergate. The victor, Frost, though we see a tinge of sadness on his face as he and all of us realize that Nixon is in fact human and that what he did was what he thought best even if noone else did.

Memorable Scene: Frost gives Nixon a gift; a pair of Italian shoes

Rating: A-

What would Hollywood awards season be without handing out a couple awards of my own for the the Best Picture nominees? Since only one of them was able to take home the Oscar, I figured that I would spread the love so that nobody went home a loser.

Award for the Best Use of Cream Pies as a Reference to Homosexuality

The winner is: Milk

Award for the Film Most Likely to Devolve into a Cheesy Exploitation Flick

The Winner is: The Reader

Award for Best Use of Repeated Lightning Strikes on a Single Character

The Winner is: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Award for Best Portrayal of Life in an Orphanage

The Winner is: Slumdog Millionaire

Award for Film Most Likely to Make Us Feel Sorry for the Bad Guy

The Winner is: Frost/Nixon

Without much surprise, Slumdog Millionaire took home the Oscar for Best Picture along with 7 others including Best Achievement in Directing and Best Adapted Screenplay. The one surprise, though not a big one, was Sean Penn beating out Mickey Rourke for Best Actor in a Leading Role. As for the movies snubbed by the Academy in their bid for Best Picture, namely WALL-E and The Dark Knight, they took home a total of three awards including Best Animated Feature (WALL-E) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight).

Another Oscar Season has come and gone and though I didn’t eat as much popcorn as I thought I would, there’s always next year. The good thing is that by my estimations there are only 363 days until the next Oscar Best Picture Marathon. I can’t wait.

This has been Jamie saying, “You can’t fool me! There ain’t no Sanity Claus!”