The Oscars

So I have to talk about the Oscars. I'm kind of late this year, posting this so soon before the ceremony, but I was able to see all 5 best pictures nominated, and came up with my ranking.

In my opinion, Slumdog Millionaire was the best of the bunch. The directing was good, the editing was fantastic, and the music, I loved the music. It was a movie that I felt 'took me there', if that makes sense. Not to the Millionaire show, but to the lives the kids lived. It was a very good movie. I saw this movie on Thanksgiving day, after playing soccer, and I had a pretty bad headache while watching it. When I see movies with a headache, I usually don't like them, so that says something about this movie.


My second favorite was Frost/Nixon. I think this was the best acted movie of the nominees. Personally, I think Frank Langella should win the Oscar for best actor, but he won't, but that's another blog. The movie did a very good job of making me feel the tension in the room when Frost and Nixon squared off. When the movie was over, there was applause. This was the only movie of the 5, where the audience applauded the movie. It was very good, and is just behind Slumdog for me.


Milk was also a very well acted movie. The ensemble was very good, and I think James Franco should have been nominated for best supporting actor (again, another blog). There was something about the pacing of this movie, that bothered me, and, even a week after seeing it, I can't figure out what it was. I found myself wondering what time it was during the movie, which is not a good sign, but I can't think of anything I would cut.



The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was the best special effects movie of the lot, and I think I would rank it higher, if it wasn't so long. There were scenes that I didn't think were necessary, and some scenes were just too long. The acting in this movie was not at the same level as the others, and I personally don't think Brad Pitt will ever win an Oscar for acting - he's just not that good of an actor. It was a good movie, and probably was deserving of the nomination, but I didn't see that many movies in 2008, so I can't really say.


The Reader is odd. It had the 2nd best acting performance of the movies nominated (see Frost/Nixon for my favorite acting performance), but I felt the first half of the movie really dragged. The first half lasts about a month of time, and the rest of the movie spans over 30 years. I felt that the first half was catering to the soft core porn academy voters. It was just overkill, I thought, and could have been cut down. This movie should have been about 1 hour and 45 minutes, instead of the over 2 hours that it is. That being said, Kate Winslet is amazing in this role, and she is truly one of the finest actresses (if not the finest) working in movies right now.

Well, there's my list. There were other movies I would recommend, that didn't get nominated, namely The Visitor, which no one saw. The Wrestler is getting a lot of buzz, but I haven't seen it yet, so I can't say much about that.

Overall, I think the crop nominated this year is weaker than last year (except for Atonement, which was crap), but if Slumdog Millionaire wins this year, I will be on a 4-year winning streak of picking the best picture.

Extra Credit

Extra credit is a weird thing.

Someone asked me the other day if I would give extra credit to students who get tutoring; my response, of course, was no. But it got me thinking about the odd mentality extra credit can bring about in some students.

I had a class a few years ago that was not doing something I wanted them to do. I said I would give them 1 point extra credit, if they did said thing; everyone did it. There were over 500 points possible in the class, but that one point meant more to some of the students than all the others. Why? I have no idea. The students who had the worst grades (who never did the 'regular' credit) were among the first to do the extra credit. Needless to say, that 1 point didn't really help their grades.

Why would you be willing to do something for 3 points of extra credit, while neglecting a 20-point assignment? I've had this happen, multiple times, and I don't get it. Is it that sense of getting something for nothing; except it's not for nothing, and what good is it, if you haven't done the non-extra credit work you should have done in the first place?

I once had a professor who said he had a fantasy of giving A's to all of his students in his last semester on the job. He would do this, without their knowledge, to get them to work just as hard as they otherwise would. I have a fantasy of having an all extra credit class in my last semester on the job, but to get an A, you'll have to get 90% of the extra credit right, 80% would get you a B, and so on....