By Rob Fagin
OSCAR HUSTLE
Frances McDormand in Fargo
Watching the right pair of movies back-to-back can
illuminate wildly different details, create a whole new
viewing experience and, just maybe, BLOW your
MIND. Plus, it's fun! Here's your monthly guide:
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like any of
the Academy Award Best Picture nominees
this year will be available for (legal) home
viewing before the March 2 Oscar broadcast,
otherwise I would gladly recommend a
Double Feature of any of them. We've got a
remarkable selection of obvious choices: 12
Years a Slave, Gravity, American Hustle and
The Wolf of Wall Street. But we've also got a
satisfyingly varied group of films with less
clout: Her, Philomena, Captain Phillips,
Dallas Buyers Club and Nebraska.
The list is extraordinarily lively and com-
plete. That's not to say it includes every great
movie from the past year (Spring Breakers,
y'all!), but what we have is a glowing sample
of celluloid/digital awesomeness from 2013.
This really would not have been possible
until 2010, when The Academy expanded the
Best Picture category from 5 to a potential 10
nominees. At the time, there was an uproar
about sacrificing the integrity of the elite 5, as
if that were the perfect number of great
movies from every year that the Academy
members would carry down from the
Hollywood Hills on engraved stone tablets.
There was speculation they made the change
because the previous year they had neglected
to include the instant classic The Dark Knight,
which made them look like the old fogies
they are, so they broadened their net just to
16 illinoisentertainer.com february 2014
have a better chance of catching the youth of
America by including more popular, mainstream nominees. Or, possibly to keep their
TV broadcast relevant to youth-oriented
viewers.
But let's look at the 2009 nominees a little
closer: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,
Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader and Slumdog
Millionaire. A totally acceptable category of
BP's loaded with "Oscar Pedigree Talent",
"Oscar Caliber Execution" and "Oscar Bait
Material." You might call this predetermination.
The terrifying Joker opus would quite
clearly be the sixth choice, but here are some
other possibilities they missed out on: The
Wrestler, Shotgun Stories, Gran Torino, WALL-E,
Synecdoche, New York, and especially the woefully neglected masterpiece In Bruges. Each
of these movies are somewhat better than at
least one of the formally honored movies
above; in fact, some flicks on this alternate list
are far better than all of the actual nominees.
There is nothing infallible about the nu X