Was the Oscar Buzz Deserved?

It has been a BUSY couple of weeks at my house. My younger daughter got engaged, my husband, older daughter, and grandson took a long road trip together, younger daughter and fiance came for a visit over Oscar weekend, and things were hectic!

 All of this activity caused our Academy Awards party to end up being a bit slapdash but my youngest son and I still had a lot of fun. We decided to eliminate some of the voting categories from the ballot because there were areas with which we weren't familiar. At the end of the night, I had predicted 9 winners correctly and my son (an aspiring filmmaker) had predicted 11 winners! His prize was a bag of Skittles as he loves candy. If you don't know what I do each year for the Oscars, take a moment and read And the Oscar Goes To.

I bought this clapboard years ago for a
movie themed birthday party and have
definitely gotten my $5.00 from it!

Just prior to watching the Oscars, we rented Nebraska, Blue Jasmine, and All Is Lost. I found something enjoyable in each film, which especially surprised me with Blue Jasmine as I am not a Woody Allen fan at all.

Following the Oscars, we rented Dallas Buyers Club and went to see American Hustle. Let me just say that if you haven't seen either of these films, you owe it to yourself to see what all the Oscar buzz was about. Both films have a lot of profanity and sex scenes but they are true to the characters and not at all just thrown in gratuitously.

Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto turned in amazing performances in Dallas Buyers Club. They richly deserved their Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

The two of us had such fun that I have decided next year to have a real Academy Awards night party and invite other movie loving folks to join us. I got some great decorating ideas from several television shows I watched prior to the Oscars that I can't wait to try. I think I may even start a new Pinterest board to help me in my preparations.

What did you think of the Academy Awards? Did you think that the best movies, actors, and other categories were fairly awarded? Who do you think should have gotten Best Picture, Actor, Actress, etc.?

And the Oscar Goes to...

Oscar season is upon us! My youngest son and I are starting our quest to watch as many of the Best Picture nominees as we can before the Academy Awards air on March 2.

Recently we watched Captain Phillips. May I just say that I don't understand why Tom Hanks wasn't nominated for his very superlative performance? His performance was gripping!

I bought some Alamo Drafthouse movie tickets through a wonderful Groupon offer so that we can go see the movies that are still showing in theaters. We are debating on what to go see: American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street are at the top of my list but my son isn't sure he wants to see a movie that may have sex scenes in it with his mother...Twelve Years a Slave is still in theaters as is Frozen, and Dallas Buyers Club.

If you have not had the opportunity to watch movies at Alamo Drafthouse, I strongly urge you to give them a try. The cost of the movies is often less than at other theaters and the movie going experience is much better. If someone in an Alamo theater pops out a cell phone during a movie, the staff at Alamo Drafthouse will pop them out of the theater! Also, they have a strict no-children policy that I very much appreciate. I love children and have often felt very uncomfortable seeing young children at adult movies. This is not an issue at Alamo Drafthouse.

I also want to see Philomena as I adore Judy Dench in just about everything. I saw the actual Philomena on The View. I am a sucker for stories that are based on real people and events; it is the journalist in me. I think that true life is way more interesting than fiction. Unfortunately, Philomena doesn't seem to playing anywhere near me and the DVD doesn't come out until two days after the Oscars. So, I won't be able to see it before the show but I do plan to see it as soon as I can.

We are going to rent Gravity and Nebraska when they are available on February 25. Can you tell that we take this Oscar stuff very seriously?

We find this to be another way we can live large on a small budget- for more on how we roll at my house see my post Tighten Your Spending Not Your Living. We get our movie tickets as inexpensively as possible, rent movies from Redbox, print the ballots (Printable Oscar Ballot) to fill out before the show, decorate the dining room table creatively with movies and other things we have around the house, and serve special snacks for our own Oscar party. The person who does the best at choosing the winners gets a prize too. Last year I found an instrumental CD of Oscar nominated movie soundtracks at the Dollar Tree for our prize. So, even our prize was inexpensive AND it went with the Oscar theme!

Do you enjoy the Oscars? What movie do you think will win Best Picture? Let's discuss below in the comments.