Confessions of a Movie Buff: My Oscar Shame

With the Oscars less than two weeks away, many are speculating as to which movies will take home the coveted golden statues this year.  In London yesterday, the BAFTA's top honor of Best Picture went to The Hurt Locker, which also took home four other awards including Best Director, while mega-blockbuster Avatar only took home two (I still think it's hilarious that these two front-runners are directed by ex-spouses James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow).  For our own Academy Awards, this is the first year that there are 10 films up for Best Picture instead of the usual five.  The list goes: (full list of nominations here)

Avatar
The Blind Side
The Hurt Locker
Precious
District 9
Up
An Education
A Serious Man
Up in the Air
Inglorious Basterds 

I have to say that this is also the first year where I would genuinely like to see each of these movies (maybe with the exception of District 9, which just didn't look that appealing).  Sadly, the only one on this list that I did manage to see (and buy) is Disney/Pixar's Up, which had me crying and laughing within the first 20 minutes.  Not since Beauty and the Beast in 1991 has an animated film been nominated for Best Picture, and Up certainly deserves the honor.  I never did get to see Sandra Bullock's first Oscar-nominated performance in The Blind Side (I'm a sucker for football movies) or Twilight's Anna Kendrick make her real-movie debut alongside George Clooney in Up in the Air.  I wasn't even one of the millions that helped Avatar become the highest grossing film of all time, beating Cameron's previous record with Titanic.

Shame on me...and I call myself a movie buff.

Blame the insanely high price of movie theater tickets these days, but 2009 definitely takes the cake as the year I went to the theater the least.  With Red Box charging only a dollar a night to rent a DVD, waiting a few months to save $10 per movie is just far more appealing to me (college student with limited funds here).  I did manage to catch several other movies with Oscar-nominated performances using this system, such as Meryl Streep's spot-on and hilarious turn as Julia Child in Julie & Julia (someone give this woman another Oscar already...who cares which movie, she's great in anything).

Hopefully once the statues have been handed out, the hype has died down and the DVDs start rolling onto the shelves, I'll be able to say that I've seen all ten of these highly-acclaimed movies (And yes, I'm aware that seeing Avatar on the small screen is a waste of cinematographic wonder...I'll deal with it). Until then, I'll just keep blindly guessing as to which one will take home the big Oscars, and happily cheer when Up ultimately wins Best Animated Film.

What are your predictions?