Oscar Night

Well it's the one year a night where many of us will sit down and undertake one of the most grueling tasks to curse the TV viewer.  I of course refer to the Oscars, the only night in TV when you have five minutes of programming followed by five minutes of commercials for about one and a half hours.  This was ridiculous.  I apologize, but I was just astonished at how often we cut to commercial.  Obviously the Academy is short of money for all that they spent putting this on at the Kodak this year, because we had so many commercial breaks.

Overall, this was a bad year for movies.   Sitting in previews, my parents and I make a habit of turning to one another when we see a really bad looking film and saying, "Miss that one." We said that a lot this year.  It's kind of like picking wine.  I don't drink the stuff but I know there are good and bad years.  In the end though, I had two top picks that are the best vintage of 2010.  Its always so interesting to see the nominations for short films, documentaries and things we really rarely see in the main stream culture.  There are movies featured here I've only seen listed at the local Palm Theater, an establishment to itself for independent films in San Luis Obispo.  I think Hollywood needs to wake up and make more films like these.  Hopefully this year will be a better vintage for Hollywood gold and the 2011 Oscars will be far more sweet to my viewing pleasure.

Thank you to Hollywood.  You stood and delivered the Best Picture to a film that truly deserved it.  The King's Speech was the only good movie I saw this year, and this was a black year for films.  This movie is what movies should be: heartwarming, emotion tugging, true story mixed with fiction that's written well and paced superbly.  Its a grown up movie, no doubt about it.  It didn't have flashy effects like so many of the top billed movies.  I don't think the lack of effects detracted at all, in fact, it was refreshing to say the least.

As a person who has suffered from a learning disability, I know what tremendous courage it takes to face that disability and look it in the eye.  Watching this, I had to cringe to think that people treated another person as awfully as they did to George VI.  It was heartbreaking, especially having dealt with people in past and present who do not understand my own learning difficulties.  No one would want to go through what this man undertook.  Bravo to Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and all the rest.  I hope this film can be a reminder to anyone with any disability that they can overcome it.