I love movies. But I don't love to spend money. Not my own money, anyway. So I rarely set foot inside a movie theatre. In fact, I think the last movie I went to was Disney's "A Christmas Carol" in 2009. I didn't like it. That having been said, I still do watch a lot of movies. I see them on TV or on iPad.
Paul J. Schneider and I used to have a plan each year when the Oscar nominations were announced, as they were yesterday. We vowed to see as many of the movies nominated for best picture as we could before the actual Academy Award ceremony. We usually did pretty well, because at that time the number of best picture nominees was limited to five, and the majority of nominated movies then and now only hit theatres in December, so they're still in theatres following the nominations.
There were a couple of years in a row when I managed to see four of the five nominated movies, and both times the movie I didn't see won the Oscar.
This year there are nine nominees. I have a reasonably tight family budget these days, so I more than likely will not see any of them before the Academy Awards are handed out. On the entire list of nominees, including best picture and all the other awards, I haven't seen a single movie. Not even the ones nominated for best special effects. Not even the animated features. I do plan to watch "Iron Man 3" this weekend, so at least I'll have that.
Here's the part I find funny. Whether I've seen any of the movies or not, every year on Oscar night I fill out a ballot and try to choose the winners. As you might expect by now, the fewer movies I've seen, the better my picks are. And that makes me wonder just how many of the actual Academy voters cast votes without having seen all of the movies. I'm guessing it's a lot. And yes, I would love to be an Academy voter, but for only one reason. The movie studios send them free DVDs to make sure they see the movies. And I can afford that.
