Well, I took a bit of a break from blogging about movies but I’m back with a few reviews. My self-assignment is to watch all of the Academy Award winners for best picture from 1928 on as well as all of the movies that Filmsite.org says should have won for each year. At the end of each decade I do a wrap-up where I break down my favorites into two categories: movies I would watch again (my highest accolade) and movies I was glad I saw.
My biggest personal win of this project so far has been discovering the American musical. I used to dismiss them out of hand and now I look forward to them. I have a couple of musical “buddies,” Betsie and Joel, whose infectious good attitude about singing, dancing and costuming has gone a long way in showing me all that the genre has to offer.
I’m also finding that Academy Award winners tend to be “heavy” and dramatic and if you’re not into the theme or can’t relate to it, the movies can come across as dull. I was doing some surfing about what kinds of movies become Oscar nominated and found the following in Wikipedia:
A study by Gabriel Rossman and Oliver Schilke, two sociologists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), reviewed data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), such as genres and plot keywords, for 3,000 movies released between 1985 and 2009 to see what elements were likeliest to draw Oscar nominations. The researchers found that war movies, historical epics, and biographies earned the most. Plot elements of political intrigue, disabilities, war crimes and show business were also very common element of nominated films. A release during Oscar season, or by an independent division of a major studio were also strong indicators.[16][17] The study found that some keywords had a strongly negative correlation with Oscar nominations, such as “zombie”, “breast implant” and “black independent film”.[9]
I’m somewhat disappointed to find that I don’t actually enjoy many of these award winning movies. Perhaps its good for my cultural knowledge to watch them but it’s also frustrating. I feel like a cultural rube and also, as I’m watching movies made 60 and 70 years ago (which is where I am right now) out of touch with no way to reach through the years and connect with the subject matter.
I also don’t have a lot of confidence as a movie watcher. When I read a book I can tell you whether I liked it and why but more importantly I can tell whether it was a “good” book – whether it was well-crafted. With movies I hope to be caught up in the magic but I am really bad at evaluating a movie’s technical sophistication. For instance, Citizen Kane did very little for me. I was most impressed by how they aged Welles and didn’t catch any of the camera work just watching the film that I read about later.
I think I’m expected to appreciate technical sophistication. And I can in my own age. I was blown away by Star Wars as a child and by Jurassic Park as a young adult and more recently by The Matrix. But more subtle sophistication? Lighting and camera angles? Not so much.
So, right now, I have to say that what I look forward to most about some of the movies I’m watching that were made in the 30s, 40s and 50s are storylines I enjoy and can relate to. It sometimes makes for strange bedfellows.
Follow me along on my quest to become culturally literate!
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