The Premise of this Internet Blog

The 'Net has come a long way since my first Geocities page in middle school, and now I'm back in 2014 to document my progress on a new and exciting project: watching every film that has ever been nominated for, or won, "Best Picture" at the Academy Awards.

Other people have endeavored to watch all of the actual winners (see e.g. this blog, discovered only because I tried to take the name), but my research indicates no similar attempt to do what I am doing. 

Watching all of the winners is easy; it narrows the field. I could do that in a matter of weeks. This is hard. By my count, there are 507 films that have ever been nominated or won. As of this post, I've seen roughly 120 of them already. With 380-ish to go, I could watch five films per week and still take over a year to finish the task. I will not be able to watch 5 films every week, and so it will take longer than that.

Part of this project will be logistically difficult. I am not sure where to find "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" or "Flirtation Walk." I may have to use a VCR for some of these films. I will, at the very least, certainly have to get a full, old-fashioned, snail-mail subscription to Netflix.

Why do this? There are many Top 100 and Top 500 lists floating around that I could tackle instead, but those lists all enjoy the benefit of hindsight. I am watching all the films that "The Academy" deemed award-worthy for their time, in 1940, and 1980, and 1990, etc., and admittedly ignoring all of the great films that were not. It's as much a morbid fascination with the history of film industry back-patting as it is with the films themselves. I hope the experience will be rewarding. I hope to see and enjoy films that I otherwise never would.

Paul Haggis and Cathy Schulman would like to welcome you to this blog

Unfortunately I know that some of this experience will suck. I watched "Love Story" (nominated in 1970) last week; it is an awful movie. That's why this is Oscar Purgatory. I am an audience of one captive to the historical judgments of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a voting bloc that originally started as studio executives wanting to mediate labor disputes and make themselves richer.

As I watch movies, I will rank them on a scale of 1 to 10, and summarize my brief thoughts, in this document. Thanks for reading.