Let's Watch Oscar's Greatest!

I'm starting this blog because I've been doing the whole Oscar Handicapping thing since I was in High School but for some reason, when it comes to actually watching the movies the Academy honors with nominations, I've actually seen very few, and most of them are from the last five decades.

So, I'm remedying that one. I've decided to watch every movie the Academy has nominated for all the major awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and screenplay (including all writing categories, regardless of their name at the time). I'd go further, but many of the other categories changed significantly over the years, and including all of them will likely give me a headache. What I want to focus on are the movies the Academy truly felt contained the greatest performances, the greatest writing, were guided by the best hands and were the best films each year could offer. I'll be judging them based on how well they hold up, whether or not they were deserving at the time, whether or not I recommend the film and general thoughts.

I won't make any promises as to how fast I can get each post up. I'd like to do a post a week, but I might skip some weeks or put up more than one in a week, all depending on how much I'm able to watch and how much time I get to write about it.

This is clearly going to be a long project, especially as I'm going to re-watch any movies I've already seen when they come up. That's well over 1500 movies and many are three-plus hours long. Also I don't like to feel like I'm stuck in a given decade. So what I've done is made up a little bag with slips of paper, each containing a category, and I'll be selecting one at random from the bag. Then I will use a random year-generating website to give me a year. Whatever category gets chosen, I will watch all films in that category for the random year given me.

Clearly this will give me films nominated in other categories their given years as well. This is fine, and I don't see a need to watch each film more than once, unless I've truly forgotten everything about it when it comes up again.

This first selection gave me Best Supporting Actor, 1938.

This year, the Academy nominated:

• Walter Brennan in Kentucky (the winner)
• John Garfield in Four Daughters
• Gene Lockhart in Algiers
• Robert Morley in Marie Antoinette
• Basil Rathbone in If I Were King

Of the nominees, this year, few were in movies honored in other major categories. Four Daughters was a Best Picture nominee, while Algiers and Marie Antoinette were nominated in other acting categories.

Each new category will come with an introductory post like this one, introducing the year and category, and a quick summation. Each film I watch, I'll give a short review, speaking mainly of the nominees and my impression of them. I'll finish each category watch with a concluding post, comparing each of the nominees in that category, and whether or not I feel the Academy got it wrong or right.

As most of these films are older, spoilers will be coming a-plenty, though I'll try to leave the events of the film vague enough that watching it will still be a good experience.