My Busy Season

I always refer to this time of year as "my busy season." It's awards season, all the "prestige" movies from big and smaller studios are out, the movies in limited release have gone into wide release, and the movies from the summer and fall are out on video. I have my list of movies to see before I make my Top 10 of 2009 list, once the Academy Awards announces their best picture nominees I'll have those to see, and then there's the few January releases I'd like to see. There's a lot of movies to see, a lot to catch up on.

Recently I've seen on DVD two movies that I missed in the theaters, The Hurt Locker and Taking Woodstock. I'm not sure what I expected from Taking Woodstock. A good soundtrack? Drug use? Behind the scenes of a major concert? An LSD trip? Naked hippies? Well I got all that in about 2 hours and I don't feel like I know anymore about the concert than I did before I saw the movie and I didn't find the lives of the people behind the concert all that compelling. The film ended and like the characters looking out at the fields inundated with garbage and mud (those hippies sure made a big mess) I had the same feeling I'm sure they had: It's time to get out of here.



The Hurt Locker, which I finally got a copy of from the local video store (the wait on Netflix had changed to "Very Long"), is one of the best movies of the year. I avoided this movie when it was in theaters because I was under the impression that it would be like all the other movies about the Iraq War: overly anti-war, politically charged, melodramatic, claiming to be showing how things "really are" over there. I was really amazed. There's a lot I want to say about this movie but I'll save that for a later post (yes, the Top 10 of 2009 post).


Tomorrow I plan on seeing Precious while I still can in the theaters. The only reason I've put off seeing that movie for so long is it looks like it's going to be a lot pain to get to what I hope will be a positive ending.

I always do my best to see all of the Academy Awards' best picture nominees before the awards ceremony; I feel like that makes my opinion about who should or shouldn't win more valid. This year there will be 10 best picture nominees, that's a lot. In two weeks the Academy Awards will announce their nominees for best picture and then I'll be back at the movies.