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Watching all the movies nominated for the big eight Oscar categories was…well…fun.  That’s why we did it, right?  Either that, or I’ve just said that so many times I’ve managed to convince myself.  While the highlight of the experience may have been watching There Will Be Blood with Dick Cheney (yes, really), lots of fun stuff happening along the way.  Here’s a few (and apologies to anything I missed):

•  Finally getting this thing off the ground.  The early movies (e.g. American Gangster, Eastern Promises) didn’t quite live up to all their Oscar buzz.  They were also the only movies we saw with Adam…heck, they were the last time we saw Adam until the Oscars.
• Showing up like two hours early for the free Juno screening.  Where we got a free bright orange shirt reading “Paulie Bleeker is Totally Boss”.  And I still don’t understand why that was on the shirt.  We saw a high school math teacher there.  I had a conversation with another theater patron about Fracture (I didn’t like it, she loved it), which was a movie I never expected to discuss with anyone.  Brian, John, Gavin, and I all saw a poster for, and discussed how little we wanted to see…
• The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.  It could be argued that, for me, this movie validated the whole enterprise.  Because I otherwise never would have seen a movie I so thoroughly enjoyed (to a lesser extent the same goes for A Mighty Heart).  While sitting in the front row because the movie sold out (forcing John and Dorothy to go see The Bucket List).
• Bearing witness to perhaps the most perfect group of karaokers ever in some dive bar near the Arlington Drafthouse.  Only to find that they weren’t going to show the movie due to…the manager wanting to go home.
• Finally seeing that movie, Lars and the Real Girl, and realizing (through the billowing smoke of the person in front of me who was apparently so happy to smoke in a theater he was going through an entire pack at a time) that it would be My Movie for the year.
• Seeing I’m Not There at the Avalon, which I had passed by over 300 times without ever seeing a movie.  Granted, it wasn’t always open for business the whole time.
• Seeing The Counterfeiters at the National Geographic Society with free beer, fruit, cheese and crackers, brownies, and cookies.
• That moment after The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford when I realized, “Wow.  It is over.”
• Watching the Oscars and being able to talk intelligently (well, ok, I won’t make the joke) about the movies nominated.
• Doing this all with my fellow Grouches.  Believe me, a huge reason this all was so much fun was being able to see and talk about these movies with you guys.  And the all-too-rare occasions where I could make fun of you for liking stupid movies.  Many thanks, and here’s to another great year.  We’re hoping we can keep things going until next Oscar season starts heating up.

It’s been over a week since the Oscar ceremony and I guess the eerie silence around these parts is an indication that all of us were a bit Oscared out, what with all the movie watching, review writing, predicting, and live blogging. So now that everyone and their mom has chimed in with their thoughts on the telecast, why not us?

I enjoyed it. I know it was the lowest rated Oscars in modern history, but it was fairly entertaining with a great host and good winners. Jon Stewart delivered a funny monologue and did a great job emceeing. He got poor reviews two years ago in what I thought was a fine performance but the reviews seem to be pretty universally positive this time around. He also gets a huge pat on the back for bringing Marketa Irglova back out to give her speech. The tribute to binoculars and periscopes was inspired.

The rest of the montages were pretty weak. On the one hand, we avoided some of the lame montages of recent years (writers on film! all the foreign films to have ever won the Oscar!), but on the other we didn’t get any good ones. These were clearly made in case the strike didn’t end in time and the Academy couldn’t get old movie clips for free, so naturally they used the footage they already owned. Kind of a yawn and self-congratulating. The Oscars presents… another montage about the Oscars!

But let’s talk about the winners. I’m very happy with how it all went down. In the series of articles we posted proclaiming our preferences, my favorite won all but one of the categories (and the one standout, Javier Bardem, is completely deserving anyway). I was happy to see Julie Christie lose and was pleased for the praise lavished on No Country for Old Men. If only their pseudonym Roderick Jaynes had won for Best Editing then the Coens would’ve picked up four Oscars. Tilda Swinton’s win was a very pleasant surprise because you had to think that Cate Blanchett, Ruby Dee, and Amy Ryan all had legs up on her.

Actually, my favorites won much more often than my predictions. And on that note, congratulations to Adam who walked away with the Oscar pool victory. Getting 16 of 24 in this year is a very nice score.

I wouldn’t say there were many upsets, save maybe for Swinton and Marion Cotillard. While the categories were often hard to pick, one of the front-runners generally won. I was a bit surprised to see The Bourne Ultimatum sweep the sound categories and editing. I guess I don’t know much about sound but it seems to me so much of No Country for Old Men was told through sound, while Bourne was more just loud and the editing was merely a case of quantity. The quick cuts sort of made me nauseous. The Transformers shut out was also somewhat surprising. It was a fairly good action flick and it looked really great. And with his loss, Transformers sound mixer Kevin O’Connell lost the Oscar for the 20th time without a win.

No weird shadow performance art this year, which was nice, but some of the song performances sort of fell flat. “Falling Slowly” sounded great, of course, and “Raise It Up” from August Rush came out well, but I don’t think any of Enchanted’s songs translated well to the Oscar stage. “That’s How You Know,” a big, rousing number in the film fell flat on stage. How neat would it have been to see Eddie Vedder or Dewey Cox up there instead?

And so another Oscar season is behind us. I thought it was a terrific year for film with a lot of very deserving nominees. I saw a lot of films for this project and only disliked a surprising few. So here’s to killing our braincells with sports comedies and superhero movies until this fall, when we’ll be back on the lookout for quirky comedies, lush period pieces, and bleak stories about the dark side of humanity full of moral ambiguity.