by Matt Barr

Oscars! Yeehaw!

They're giving out the Academy Awards tonight. I don't see many of the movies that get nominated in the big categories. Looking over the last 10 years' nominees for best picture, I see I've seen 23 out of 50. I no more watch movies because they're supposed to be exemplary filmmaking than I read Faulkner for fun. But I blame the kids, too. Our movie excursions tend to be toward Nanny McPhee or Narnia. If the adults watch something it's usually on DVD, and often the nominees aren't out on DVD yet by the time of the awards. A quick eyeball shows that I saw six of the 23 from the last 10 years in the theater, and you might be able to guess which ones: The Lord of the Rings movies, the Sixth Sense, Titanic and Seabiscuit. (I loved the Seabiscuit book.)

So while this year seems like the first year I haven't seen any of the five films nominated for best picture, chances are there have been other years I haven't seen any of the nominated films on the day they held the awards. I will say though that I won't be surprised if I never do see any of the five nominated movies from this year. I have seen one of the movies whose actor or actress is nominated. Look at me go! And I had hoped to see another, but Blockbuster didn't have Walk the Line when I went in there this weekend to get the next Sopranos disc (I'm watching the series again before next Sunday, I'm on season four episode four).

The one actress-nominated performance I saw was Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice, a gorgeous, really well done movie that evidently did not have one of the five best adapted screenplays of the year. (Do Academy voters know it was a book?) I can't say whether Knightley's was the best performance of the year -- who am I supposed to compare her to, Zooey Deschanel in Hitchhiker's Guide? Though having seen most other Reese Witherspoon movies, I find it awfully hard to believe she's in the zip code Knigthley gets her Pride and Prejudice fan mail delivered to. But what do I know. Judi Dench, who is also in Pride and Prejudice, she seems like the A league, Charlize Theron is all getting nominated now because she won, she'll be nominated every other year till people forget about Monster. And Felicity Huffman played a trans-sexual, which other than a prostitute has got to be the best way to get nominated. She was great in SportsNight.

Knightley was really terrific. She has a very expressive face, as my wife notes. Her character lives in an era where she can't run around being expressive -- what little of her mind she does speak gets her yelled at -- but Knightley does a great job getting across what she's thinking and feeling without always saying it. Go Keira.

UPDATE: If Witherspoon was better than Knightley then I'll definitely have to rent Walk the Line. Good for her.

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