Maybe I've been expecting too much, seeing Hollywood as something of a God, but ever since I was a little girl I've been fascinated with celebrity, movies and the shining vision of being a star, dreaming I was on stage receiving one of those golden cameos of honor. I can remember sitting down with my parents to watch the Oscars and listening to the presenters dressed in their royal gala, the audience filled with all our favorite actors and actresses and only dreaming I could be amongst them. 
I guess I never saw the Oscar for what it really is...... a "political" award. I always saw the winner as the "best of the best". Now as an adult, I can go back and actually look at the prior winners and say with conviction that the award doesn't always go to best movie, though there are very many fantastic films honored with the award, one of them being The Sound of Music. I love how this movie makes me feel. The story line, the music, the setting, the acting, all breathe such life and love into my soul.
I've been waiting for Slumdog Millionaire to come in the mail since putting it on our queue on Blockbuster after the Oscars. Now that I've seen it, I have to go back to what motivated me to love the Oscars in the first place.
After viewing this film, I don't see how it can claim being "The feel-good film of the decade", especially when compared to The Sound of Music. I felt like I had been pushed in a sewer and left out to dry in a garbage dump!I asked my Pakistani patient if there was any truth to the down trodden portrayal of life in India and he said "yes". That there are some there whose home consists of a canopy attached to a building and that they live there all their life. He said that the garbage dump areas truly do exist. I was appalled.
How can you compare riding bicycles in the countryside and singing Do Rae Me to children getting their legs cut off and their eyes burned out as being one and the same? I didn't "feel good" at all after viewing this film.
Not to mention that it also won for best music. The song Jai Ho showed up at the end of the film with a bunch of Indian youth dancing to a souped up version of Persian Rap with Michael Jackson dance moves and was totally disconnected to the entire movie. Why didn't they keep to the Pakistani ways and use Persian choreography? The song at the end of Wall-e made me cry it has such a potent message in it. Why didn't IT win? I don't get it.
Nah! The U.S. being at war with a Persian country and a film based on Persian lifestyle winning the Oscar isn't a political thing...... wouldn't you agree?
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The past three years have really changed my feelings about the Oscar and has left me disappointed and sad to say the least.
The problem I've found, is that no matter how many movies I've seen in the year, the ones nominated, for the most part, are movies I haven't even heard of, let alone seen, and most likely are still in theaters, which makes it even more difficult to view them all before Oscar rolls around.
So more than likely we end up seeing the winners of last years Oscars over the span of the next year and this is exactly what we are still doing. We're still catching up on 2008 movies, which were the 2007 picks, so I'm seriously two years behind.
This year I printed up the Oscar ballots for everyone and we all picked which movie, song, actor we wanted to win and which ones actually won. It was fun but got a little heated because poor Claralynne was bored to death in a darkened room where she couldn't be two years old and run around getting into things while we were all glued to the t.v.
After finally getting to best actor/actress and best picture, it appeared that the DVR had stopped taping so when all we really needed to do was move into the next taped area on the DVR, we accidently fast forwarded and the in rewinding revealed all the winners in fast motion replay.........shoot! Oh well, no worries! Sean Penn looked great in fast-mo!
I've since viewed Milk and Vicky Christina Barcelona, only one of which was good film and it didn't have a sexy actress in it! If I had known Vicky Christina was a Woody Allen film I wouldn't have wasted my time. I can't stand him..... speaking of Hollywood Politics. I haven't the foggiest why everyone thinks he us such an icon! I really don't like his films, nor his lifestyle at all!
I have no clue why Penelope Cruz won for best supporting actress. So what if she can get angry and stay pretty, that doesn't prove she can act! Sean Penn, however, did a phenomenal job in Milk, and I will buy that film. I haven't seen Benjamin Button yet but it is in my Blockbuster queue right now and I'm waiting for it to come in the mail!
I like it when I finish viewing a movie and want to watch it again or maybe want to buy it so I can see it again some time in the future. I'm not a snob about blood and guts, one of my favorite movies is Pulp Fiction, and I can remember seeing the end and couldn't believe I actually loved it, especially because it has many elements in it that made me hate the other movies.
So I guess what it boils down to is that all the Hollywood glamour just doesn't cut it for me now that I can see through it and have my own best movie opinions. Oscar may be losing it's luster for me, but this hasn't damaged my love of movies.
Maybe I'll hold my own Oscars and pick from the films my family and cohorts actually saw in the year, not the ones the film community chose for us. Just because I feel let down by the prior Oscar winners, doesn't mean you won't find me at Blockbuster or in the theater getting my fill of movie adventure.
