The Oscars Preview: Part 2 – My Picks

I waited to write this column until I saw A Serious Man, the last of the bigger Oscar nominees I had yet to see. Ummm yeah…I shouldn’t have bothered. I haven’t included every category because I feel I couldn’t appropriately address everything, and while I love original scores, the music wasn’t fresh in my mind for a lot of films and as such felt I couldn’t give an informed opinion. However, I would like to note that Abel Korzeniowski & Shigeru Umebayashi’s score for A Single Man is beautiful and everyone should check it out if they enjoy that kind of thing.

Anyway, here’s my selections for nominations, and again, picks for what I would personally choose as my best of the year in bold. And this includes my Top 10 of 2009. Have I egregiously left anything out? Let me know and fire back in the comments below.

Read the rest of the article at my domain, www.cineastejohn.com.

The LOST Experience.

I came into LOST a little late near the beginning of Season 2. I was in college and my parents called me insisting that I watch the Pilot. They had bought it off iTunes, watched it on a plane, and immediately raved about it. I had a vague familiarity with LOST; people were stranded on an island from a plane crash, there may or may not be dinosaurs involved, etc. But I had no idea what I was about to get myself into.

I blasted through the Season 1 and was immediately caught up to the live airing episodes of Season 2. During Season 2, I had downloaded a Dashboard widget which counted down 108 minutes, and would beep during the final 4, during which you had to input the numbers to reset it, just as they do on the show. Forgetting I had the widget, my roommate and I were watching an episode one night when we heard the familiar alarm. But it wasn’t coming from the TV and we were both sitting there wondering what was going on. Yep, it was my computer. Good times.

Read the rest of the article at my domain, www.cineastejohn.com.