We didn’t watch the Oscars on Sunday night. Haven’t in a long time either, they used to be a required viewing so that we could see if any of the movies we went to had won any of those shiny gender indistinct statuettes. But we haven’t actually been to the theater to see a movie in quite some time, 2012 is my last mention of that on this blog. And I bet that visit to an actual cineplex was a one off. I know we stopped going out for movies around the beginning of this century because I’ve got an old spreadsheet that lists the discs we rented on Netflix starting in late 1999.
Instead of watching the Oscars on Sunday we watched one of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture, The Holdovers, on Peacock. This was a near perfect movie for us, a quiet character driven movie that is set in and shot in the style of the 70’s. No explosions, no car chases, no bullet ridden bodies or computer generated space battles with hundreds of ships or soldiers.
I have also seen one of the other films of the ten that were nominated, the winner itself, Oppenheimer. It is also available on Peacock, but I didn’t think I could could get Donna to sit still for 3 hours for that. There is one other of the nominees that I could watch, Poor Things which is streaming on Hulu right now, but after watching the trailer, I’m not so sure I could get through the whole thing.
On a side note: Robert Downey Jr. won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Oppenheimer. I don’t remember seeing him in the movie at all and I don’t know who he played, but I did recognize non-winner Emily Blunt though. This was probably just a testament to Mr. Downey’s acting ability and a case of my secret crush on Ms. Blunt.