OVP: Previously, in 2006...

 2006: A Look Back

We are rolling right into the 14th Oscar Viewing Project retrospective after finishing up 2004 yesterday.  I choose which ones we are doing next in the order that I completed a year (seeing every film), and so we're going to be going back in time this year, to 2006 as we start to plug up some of our missing years.  For those who are new to this series, we do two ballots a week (usually Monday/Wednesday, but I have a full-time gig that sometimes gets around that...but we always hit two a week), so for the next ten weeks we'll be exploring 20 Oscar races from 2006.

That is enough behind-the-scenes from me, so I want you now to sit back, relax, and transport yourself back to 2006.  A time when Beyonce & Justin Timberlake were dominating the radio charts, Nancy Pelosi was becoming the first female Speaker of the House, and NASA was launching New Horizons, which a decade later would give us our first glimpses of Pluto.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Box Office

This is what the Top 10 at the (Domestic) Box Office looked like:

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

2. Cars

3. X-Men: The Last Stand

4. The Da Vinci Code

5. Superman Returns

6. Ice Age: The Meltdown

7. Happy Feet

8. Over the Hedge

9. Casino Royale

10. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

2006 is a year where I, personally, would've been able to see all of these films.  I was a film critic for my school paper (so I was actually getting paid to write about movies), but with that I got to pick which films to write about, and as a result there's a chunk of these I had no interest in that I didn't seek out.  I have not seen, therefore, Over the Hedge or Talladega Nights, though I have caught all of the rest (many of which, I'll be real, I didn't enjoy).  This was really the golden age of animation at the box office, though, with 40% of these films being animated...basically any cartoon was going to be able to land the plane when they got to the movies.

The Films I Missed

While I've seen all of the Oscar nominees, I haven't seen every film in 2006.  In addition to the films I just listed, I also haven't seen The Break-Up, the only other $100 million movie that I haven't seen.  In looking at the precursors, a few names that spring to mind that I never got around to include Miss Potter, Kinky Boots, The Fountain, and Flushed Away.  While I'll be rewatching a couple of films prior to our concluding chapter of the "My Ballot" where I name all of my choices, I don't currently have any intentions of watching these as they aren't really up my alley, but if you think I'm missing out on something, let me know in the comments.  Otherwise, get ready for Best Makeup, which we will be rolling out on Wednesday.