The Many Rantings of John, Part 2: The Oscar Viewing Project

So, where were we?  Okay, so I may have abandoned this blog three years ago, but I'm glad to see that accident attorneys, pharmaceutical companies, and hundreds of posts with Chinese character symbols still had a home on the internet.  I am nothing if not accommodating.

I can't promise I'll stick around for a long time-I've attempted blogging enough times to know that this could be my first and last post in three years.  However, I'm going to give it a college try, so let's hold off on the Propecia sales for a little while.

While I will probably pipe in on politics (Mitt Romney's inability to give a direct answer about the Dream Act is something that should be talked about) and other topics that interest me, my primary reason for return is I want to start tracking my Oscar Viewing Project.

What is the Oscar Viewing Project? I decided a few years ago that I wanted to start seeing every narrative, feature length film that had received an Academy Award nomination.  For those of you not fluent in Academy-speak, essentially this means that I want to see the nominees in every category that isn't a Documentary or Short Film category.  Not that I don't love short films or documentaries (I do), but let's keep this slightly realistic-it's hard enough to find 70-year-old films starring film legends like Gable and Crawford-how do you think I'm going to do scouring short films that haven't been seen in public in 60 years?

I know it's a project doomed to failure-though I don't have the exact number, I'm sure there are at least a dozen films that are either the way of the dodo or hiding in the attics of Louis Mayer's grandchildren, never to be seen by cinephiles again.

If my count is right, I have 2259 films left to finish the project.  This includes the predecessors to nominated films, as well as the Cannes Palme d'Or winners, because, well, if you're going to go with the Oscars you might as well hit the Nobel Prizes of Cinema.  I'll be largely working my way backward chronologically through the Oscars, so we'll be doing my missing pieces of 2010 and 2011 first.  I'll be checking in with every film as I see it, as well as other films that I encounter along the way.  I can't promise fancy graphics or gif's (I can barely program my TiVo), but stick around if you'd like to discuss the movies or the Oscars.  It should be a fun ride.