Getting ready for the Oscars!

Hooray for Hollywood!  

Ok... I don't know that it's "hooray" exactly, but I do love to watch the glam. of the Oscar night festivities.    In prep for the Oscars, one must of course have:

•  the nominees and the categories
  
• ballots for you and friends to cast their votes while munching food and sipping wine
  
• and a summary of the movies in the top categories (see below)
• wine and food
• 106" screen on which to project all the Red Carpet and Award night action.

Here are a quick summary of some of the top nominated movies (courtesy of the summaries at Oscar.com that I had to painful to find, cut and paste here)  Please see oscar.com for a more complete list of nominated films and details for each.

Enjoy!

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

 

Benjamin Button's life begins at the close of World War I, when he is born with the body of an old man. As the years pass, however, Benjamin discovers that he is gradually becoming younger even as he grows older in experience and wisdom--a situation that informs his relationship with the lovely Daisy, who reenters his life periodically as they grow closer together in physical age.

 

FROST/NIXON

 

Following his 1974 resignation, Richard Nixon withdraws from public life until talk show host David Frost persuades him--with the help of a sizeable payment--to participate in a series of television interviews.  For Frost, the much-anticipated event offers a chance to establish himself as a serious journalist, while the disgraced former president regards the interviews as an opportunity to reestablish himself on the political stage.

 

MILK

As the emerging Gay Pride movement gathers force in the 1970s, it finds a champion and a public face in San Francisco camera store owner Harvey Milk.  Leaving his closeted life in New York behind, Milk moves to California with his lover and soon turns his efforts to politics, campaigning for a spot on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors--a quest that will make him the country's first openly gay man to be elected to public office.

 

THE READER

In late 1950s Germany, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg begins an affair with Hanna, a woman in her mid-thirties. Hanna's past contains a dark secret, however, the revelation of which, in the decades following the period of his first experience with love, will both shock Michael and force him to confront his country's history.

 

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

 

An eighteen-year-old from the slums of Mumbai finds himself competing on the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," where the questions he must answer offer a look back at his earlier life. The show's host, however, insists that he must be cheating and takes steps to force young Jamal to admit that a boy from such an impoverished background could not possibly possess the knowledge necessary to win the show's top prize.

 

CHANGELING

When single mother Christine Collins's ten-year-old son, Walter, disappears, she finds herself at odds with the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department of the late 1920s, whose primary interest lies in preserving its own reputation. As the increasingly distraught Christine is subjected to brazen fraud and mistreatment by the police, she finds an ally in radio televangelist Gustav Briegleb.

 

THE DARK KNIGHT

 

Gotham City appears to be heading toward a relatively crime-free future, because of the efforts of Batman, District Attorney Harvey Dent, and Lieutenant Jim Gordon, and Bruce Wayne hopes he will soon be able to abandon his secret identity. The arrival of the terrifying Joker, however, whose actions are motivated solely by his desire to outwit the Caped Crusader, forces Wayne to continue in his role as the city's best hope against the powers of evil.

 

DOUBT

The arrival of a progressive priest at a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 leads to a confrontation with the tradition-minded nun who serves as its principal. When Sister Aloysius suspects that Father Flynn may be taking an excessive interest in the school's first African-American student, she responds with a headstrong determination that is either a necessary defense of an abused boy or a heedless condemnation of an innocent man.

 

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

Following her most recent stay in rehab, recovering addict Kym arrives at her family's home for her sister Rachel's upcoming wedding. Troubled and self-absorbed, Kym upsets the wedding plans with her constant need to focus attention on her own problems, sparking the emergence of the family's barely concealed tensions in the days leading up to the ceremony.

 

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD 

Frank and April Wheeler live a life of suburban plenty that seems on its surface to represent the essence of the post-World War II American dream. In reality, however, the pair are haunted by the thought that they have betrayed their youthful dreams and are trapped in a conventional lifestyle that falls far short of the more bohemian existence they had imagined for themselves.

 

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

When American friends Vicky and Cristina meet a charismatic Spanish artist while staying in Barcelona, they agree to fly with him to Oviedo, where Cristina and Juan Antonio begin an affair and the soon-to-be-married Vicky wonders if she has chosen the right future. Their romantic idyll takes a dramatic turn, however, with the arrival of Maria Elena, the painter's tempestuous ex-wife.