Best Picture Nominee #10 (not a moment too soon) Inglourious Basterds

For sheer entertainment factor alone, I'd put Inglourious Basterds at the top of the list of Best Picture nominees. Nerve wracking, hilarious, ridiculous and disgusting all at the same time - that's a good Quentin Tarantino film in a nutshell. (A bad one, such as Kill Bill in my opinion, is disgusting, boring, and features way too much Uma Thurman - oh wait, I already said boring).

Christoph Waltz was fantastic (and deserves to win his Oscar) and Brad Pitt was a hoot (although in the movie less than you'd imagine from the trailers).  As in all good Tarantino films, the dialogue (in four languages I might add) was practically poetic - if the poet was completely insane.

I'd give it a solid 9.  My final pick for Best Picture is a tie between Inglourious Basterds and Precious, neither of which stand a chance to win - of the two that are likely I'd rather see Hurt Locker than Avatar, because James Cameron is a tool (and his script was crap), and because it'd be the little guy (or girl) beating the big corporation.

And now - back to watching 5 month old dvd's from my Netflix queue.

Best Picture Nominee #9 - A Serious Man

I have to admit I'd never even heard of this film before it was nominated for Best Picture, although once I learned it was a Coen brothers film I figured it was worth a watch.

A friend of mine described it as "A Serious Bore" - I disagree. Yes, there wasn't much by way of an actual coherent plot - it was more of a series of vignettes based around a man whose life is going to hell - but with the usual Coen brothers dryer-than-dry gallows humor and completely unique characters, still interesting to watch. Other than that it's really too odd to describe - like most Coen brothers films, you just need to watch it.

I give it a 7.9 - almost an 8 but not quite.