Jim’s Jottings/Special Oscars Edition

Hi, Folks, I said I would only do this column every other week but this weekend is really special for those of us that are slaves to movie-magic: it’s the 90^th Academy Awards on Sunday evening at 8 PM on ABC! Need I say more?  I hope some of you have taken advantage of the local Regal Hollywood cinema’s Festival of Best Picture nominees. It concludes on March 4, so you still have some time. Check out the schedule on their website. At La Boheme last Saturday, one of our OLLI members asked me if I wouldn’t…PLEASE…reveal my choice for Best Picture…so I said, very soto voce, “Well, it seems like it’ll be a toss-up between The Post and Tell Me Your Name. Even though The Shape of Water has 13 nominations, still, it’s a kind of scifi film and love story that would rarely get the nod. Get Out is a superb and subtle thriller, but again, it’s almost like expecting Friday the Thirteenth Five to get an Oscar! Both Darkest Hour and Dunkirk are excellent films and should be right next to one another on your DVD shelf, with great, real stories from The War, with fine acting and lots of mystery and shooting…those films, the Academy does love, especially when you get actors who can lose themselves in a big role like Churchill—wow! But all that goes up against Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep…we’ll all get to learn who gets the nod at about 11:30 PM on Sunday night. My bet is that they will NOT, under ANY circumstances, mix up the envelopes like last year.

That’s my take, for what it’s worth.

Just Jim, Host of Film Forum