Invue

Best Picture - Argo This one is hard for me. Personally Les Mis deserves it, but Argo has won the Producer's Guild and the Golden Globe so it looks like it's pretty much a lock.

Leading Actor - Daniel Day Lewis It's Daniel Day Lewis... enough said

Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz Amazing performance! He is no doubt, clearly the best performance of 2012. I'm a little worried about Tommy Lee Jones though.

Leading Actress - Jessica Chastain There's a single scene in Zero Dark Thirty that makes her the clear winner. I think they could give it to Jennifer Lawrence though, being Hollywood's IT girl right now.

Supporting Actress - Anne Hathaway This one pains me. I've hated Anne Hathaway for so long. She seems like she's trying so hard to be this generations Julie Andrews, but her performance in Les Mis was second to none.

Animated Feature - Wreck-It Ralph Better than I could have ever expected! Brave might win it though with Pixar's history at the Oscars. Cinematography - Life of Pi If you can make the most tragic shipping accident look gorgeous, you might deserve an Oscar Costume Design - Les Mis I have to go with what I know. I've heard it might go to Anna Karenina, but I didn't see it. Les Mis' was amazing enough to sway me to vote for it.

Directing - Lincoln With Best Actor goes Best Directing. I would have voted for Afleck, but he's not nominated.

Documentary Feature - Searching for Sugar Man Didn't get to any of the Doc's this year, going on what I've heard.

Documentary Short - Redemption Same as above

Film Editing - Argo Brilliantly blended modern-day and historical footage together. seamless. Foreign Language Film - Amour It's the only one nominated for Best Picture, logical choice. Makeup/Hairstyling - The Hobbit Those dwarves didn't get that silly looking on their own!

Original Score - Lincoln It's John Freaking Williams, and it's beautiful. As beautiful as Life of Pi? We'll see.

There was no real drama getting there like some of the previous movies. We went on a Saturday morning so that I could get to work on time and that way my wife didn't have to worry about the kids she nannies during the week. I will say I had one of the best Icee's I've ever enjoyed during this movie.

It's rare for the concessions worker to get the perfect swirl of red and blue, but this was a total success. As I said we were at the theater in plenty of time. And while we were sitting there waiting I was completely distracted by the mural on the wall. I'll get back to that.

When I was a kid, my mom used to take me to the Broadway theater in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. It was what you think of as a classic movie theater; big marquee in lights, huge red curtain, red leather seats, the whole package. I also remember old theaters having murals on the wall. At the Broadway it was a depiction of the Garden of Eden and it spread all the way from the sides of the screen to the back of the auditorium. It was beautiful. As a kid I remembered I would be distracted by it during the movies themselves (probably because Eve had a naked breast showing). I would find myself looking all around the room at the art whenever there was a lull in the film. When I think of a mural in a theater, that's what I think of.

Well, this is the mural in the theater in the mall...

I know it's hard to make out so I'll describe it. Its a hill. and in the bottom right corner is a guy and his gal (or child) on a moped. Oh, and there's a mailbox... and a fence. Why is this here?! Who thought, 'you know what this theater needs? A picture of a hill with a guy on a moped'. Where are they going? It's so random. Anyway I thought I'd share. Aside from this monstrosity, there was one other distraction during the film.

A lady was in the room when we walked in and decided she should tell us that these seats were probably peed on because of the smell. I love that she went straight to urine instead of looking directly above the seats and seeing an obvious leak in the ceiling.

The movie was fantastic! Naomi Watts was great! At this point I really thought she should win. After seeing this, I'm not sure why Silver Lining Playbook is nominated for Best Picture and this isn't. I mean Silver Lining  was an above average romantic comedy, but this was seriously a beautiful film. If Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was nominated last year, it just doesn't make sense this wasn't this year.

This was (so far) the easiest of our Oscar journey to get to. This particular theater is nestled in a small outdoor shopping mall. We headed down early so we could get a bite to eat and went to Red Robin to enjoy some burgers. After dinner we decided to split a piece of Mud Pie, having no idea how huge it was from the picture. Ours was a little on the frozen side, but still a delicious treat.

After dinner we walked in to a few lady store where my wife procured a couple new graphic tees, and then it was off to the movies. We arrived promptly a half hour before tee time and sat down to enjoy the pre-screening events.

The film began, and I must say I loved the opening titles. If they gave awards for title sequences this should win hands down. It seems Bond sequences are either well done or over the top and this one was exceptional. I'm also not sure how Javier Bardem escaped being nominated for best supporting Actor. He was fantastic as Silva. I don't want to give too much away but I always think Bond works best when the bad guy is an equal, like 006 in Golden Eye.

My only real problem in the film is when Bond and the gang start setting up a house with booby traps ala Home Alone. I half expected him to roll out a giant hand drawn map or throw paint buckets on chains at the bad guys when they tried to enter the house.

As far as awards I don't think it has a shot at Cinematography when Life of Pi was made this year. It could win Best Song and I suppose it has a shot at Best Score because the traditional Bond theme was woven in new ways that sounded great.

We decided on the 9:30 show since the last kid my wife watched wouldn't be picked up till 7:30, that gave us a half hour to eat, and hour to drive, and leave us there a half hour early (the only way to get to a movie to ensure center/center seating.)

The kid got picked up late... No problem we ate fast and were on the road only minutes late. We should be able to pick those up on the way. But there was another issue.

Before leaving I meant to look at the street view of the theater. I knew it was going to be a close call because there were two 233 State streets. On the theaters website it was just listed 233 State St, but when I mapped it I had to pick N. State St. or S. State St. I went with North.

So we are turning on to State St and it says we are only 2.2 miles away but that it will take 7 minutes to get there. As we get to the 2.1 mile maker I realize we were lucky this time, we picked the right direction, but there was a problem, street parking.

As I said at the top, I'm not much of a Parallel parker, in fact I get really nervous about it. Most of the nerves stem from the fact that my wife is an expert technician when it comes to parking parallel. She's like a surgeon and the car her knife, cutting as close as she can to the curb without grazing it. It's a marvel to watch her.

I circle the block about 4 times and finally see my saving grace, a sign to a parking garage. By now we have 10 minutes to make it into the theater. We are lucky enough to park our car on the first floor and run to the theater.

The theater itself was a thing of beauty. A small building with the classic sign in lights. Upon entering there was a small line of people (hipsters mostly) that led to a desk with a red bearded gentleman sitting behind it. He asked for my money and gave me two tickets, identical to raffle tickets you would get at a church function. We then proceeded upstairs to find this.

Forgive me for the blurriness of the image. The whole thing reminded me of a David Lynch movie. The red curtain walls extended all the way to the back of the room and there was a weird moat-like pit between us and the screen. The seats were at an almost 90 degree angle and seemed to be made for little people. The stage was strange too, it was far too slanted for anyone to stand on, but too big to just be there. It just felt 70's, if that makes sense.

Argo started, and we immediately felt it could not be watched in a better setting. If you haven't seen it, it takes place in the late 70's/early 80's. The theater felt like it had been just redone for the film.

The movie itself was fantastic. It was the first one we saw that felt like a Best Picture nominee. Great movie, great story, drama, humor, it had it all in spades.

It felt like we were in the Truman Show trying to get there. First we were running a little behind and once we got in the car we noticed we were on E and needed to get gas. I pulled into a Shell station just to see that all the pumps had plastic bags over them so we had to drive a little out of our way to Kroger, but at least with our discount we saved 30 cents. According to our GPS we were still going to be five minutes early which turned to seven by the time we got to Ypsilanti. My wife was navigating and as we turned onto the street of the theater there was a car accident that must have been really fresh. There were two fire trucks and at least three police cars completely covering all four lanes of the highway, not to mention the crashed cars in question. The very next driveways past the accident was the theater's entrance. We were doomed. Upon trying to re-route my GPS thought we were idiots and kept telling us to "make a u-turn at the next available intersection" in her annoying autonomous voice. I blew through two intersections as my wife restarted the GPS, this time it routed us around the accident and into the theater parking lot. We ran into the theater to purchase tickets. I overheard the lady ahead of us in line order her ticket and heard that it came out to five dollars. With a crisp ten in my hand I walked up to the counter. "Two for Life of Pi, please"

"That will be $16.00"

"$16.00?!"

"Yup" she said, as she handed me our 3D glasses...

I hate 3D movies. My wife wears glasses most of the time and also hates 3D movies. When I looked up the times for the movie it had no indication that it was in 3D. If we had known it was 3D she would have been able to wear contacts and we would have no problem. We would have just waited around for a non-3D showing but we were on a time crunch because I had to be at work this afternoon, I knew we had to just deal with it. 3D glasses in hand we ran through what must have been the longest movie hallway in the history of cinemaplexes! Our movie was literally the last door on the left and we reached our seats seconds before previews (super late in my book). Sitting behind us was a nice Asian family, two kids and their parents. I'm one of the few people that love sitting near kids during movies because you get to experience the film through their eyes. I love to hear their little questions when they're confused and the wow's of when they're overcome. Let's just say these kids did not disappoint.  

I work Saturdays at 3:00pm and luckily we were able to find an 11:00 showing that morning. We got up a little earlier than we usually do on a Saturday and booked it down to the theater. It was more packed than I expected and most of the audience was a little older, so I was worried having not watched a single preview for this film. On top of that I'm not a huge David O. Russel fan. The Fighter was fine, but not a "Best Picture" in my book. The movie was filled with almost too realistic yelling matches and mental breakdowns. I actually felt a little uncomfortable, which was great really. I also totally did not see the dance sub-plot coming, kudos for that. I credit this to Russel's known outbursts on set, most famously with Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees as seen here. Overall, it was really good. Best Picture? maybe, but really good nonetheless. Based on this being the first major award movie we've seen I'd say it earned Best Supporting Actor/Actress with De Niro and Weaver being the most believable parents to a bi-polar grown-up son I've ever seen. Both of them stole the scene whenever they showed up.