Movie season

When I was younger, I'd get to the movie theater every week. I'd go to opening nights, midnight shows, and see films three, four, five times.

Times have changed, and I just don't have the ability to do that any more. Work, family, and just being too old to stay up past midnight have altered my theater-going jam.

Also, I nearly always go to the theater alone. Partially, this is because I like to see films early in the day, which often doesn't jive with others' schedules. Also, many of the films I want to see aren't necessarily what others want to see. so at some point in my life I became very comfortable with going solo.

One routine I've been able to maintain over the past five or so years is that I commit myself to seeing all of the Best Picture nominees for the Academy Awards. Typically, when the nominations come out (this year, it'll be at about 8am on Tuesday, the 23rd), I will have seen one or two during the year, and then I have to strategize some way of seeing the other seven or eight (the nominee list maxes at 10 and has been anywhere from 8-10 since the Academy expanded the number in 2009). AMC Theaters has a yearly Best Picture marathon, held over two Saturdays, where they screen half of the nominees on one day, and half on the other day. I've taken advantage of that more than a couple times.

This year, I'm confident I will have seen a lot of the nominees. I've already seen "Dunkirk" (loved it), "Lady Bird" (loved it), "Get Out" (really awesome), and "The Shape of Water" (so beautiful).

Earlier this week, I watched "The Big Sick" on Amazon Prime. I love Kumail Nanjiani, mostly from "Portlandia", and he's great in this. The whole cast (especially Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) is great, and the story is pretty wild.

And last night I saw "The Post" which was (as expected) exactly what I wanted it to be in a Spielberg-directed historical drama starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. If you loved "All The President's Men" or "Spotlight", you'll enjoy this very much.

I also have plans to see "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" this week, and "The Darkest Hour". I (of course) have no idea what the actual nominees will be, but everything I've read have the above listed films in the mix, along with a couple of others ("Call Me by Your Name", "Phantom Thread", and "The Florida Project"). We'll see on Tuesday.

I don't want to put up a post without some sort of update on the FMT, so I'm going to be rejiggering the "big list" (the 200+ film list that gets trimmed). It may be larger, but it'll still get separated into multiple conferences. In the past ten years, the NCAA tournament has changed from one play-in game to four (known as the First Four), so the field starts with 68 teams, so I'll probably mimic that.

Until next time!