Thursday, January 10, 2008

Cinema paradiso

Entertainment Weekly has once again published their list of "The 25 Movies You Need to See Before Oscar Night." As mentioned last year, I willingly enslave myself to this list every year, dutifully seeing every movie before the big night. I'm in pretty good shape this year, as I've already taken in 15 of the 25 recommended flicks (those I've seen are in red):

1. No Country for Old Men
2. Atonement
3. Juno
4. Michael Clayton
5. There Will Be Blood
6. Into the Wild
7. American Gangster
8. The Diving Bell & the Butterfly
9. Sweeney Todd
10. Charlie Wilson's War
11. The Kite Runner
12. Away from Her
13. Eastern Promises
14. La Vie en Rose
15. I'm Not There
16. A Mighty Heart
17. Gone Baby Gone
18. The Assassination of Jesse James...
19. Lars & the Real Girl
20. Hairspray
21. 3:10 to Yuma
22. The Savages
23. Enchanted
24. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
25. Ratatouille

I'll be seeing Charlie Wilson's War tomorrow night, and La Vie en Rose is the next item in my NetFlix queue, so I feel I'm in a good position as the last-minute rush to Oscar begins. I admit, I made a couple of educated guesses that turned out to be blunders -- I figured The Kite Runner and A Mighty Heart were dead in the water so I could safely ignore them; now I need to track them down. I understand that EW's list is no award in itself and can be riddled with errors, but still I'm glad to see Casey Affleck's 2007 efforts, Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James, both made the cut. His performances in both were revelations to me -- who knew the kid could act?

Now the question is, will there be an Oscar ceremony this year?

3 comments:

Will said...

I've seen No Country, Sweeny Todd and Ratatouille and my wife has a screener of There Will be Blood that we'll check out but I'll get to the rest another day.

minijonb said...

i've seen the first four, and now i need to catch There Will Be Blood before it gets too late.

...in answer to your question, i think there will be an Oscars presentation on TV, but i don't know if it will be worth watching.

Diane Wood Sponheim said...

Hi I randomly found you by paging through blogs ... anyway, I'm taking your delurking request to heart! Love your movie list. I. too, go on an Oscar Quest each winter ... great for the doldrums that set in up here in cold MN. Great blog - glad I stopped by!