79th Academy Awards

Every year, Kesley and I, along with a couple of our best friends, make a point of watching every Best Picture nominated movie, so that on awards night we can intelligently make our picks in an online chatroom. This will be our fifth year, I believe.

This year, the nominations are:

The Departed

Little Miss Sunshine

The Queen

Letters from Iwo Jima

Babel

We've seen the first two, leaving only three to see over the course of the next 4 weeks. Since we have young children, we often will go out individually on weeknights to catch a movie every week or so in order to get them all in.

Watching a movie on a Wednesday night by yourself in a theater is an experience worth having. When the Pianist was nominated a couple of years ago I was the only one in the theater during the 10 o'clock showing. Halfway through, thinking the theater was empty, they shut off the film on me. I stood up in protest, and the guy had to restart it for me.