Only 2 days left to day 0 and today we take a look at last year's winner: Argo! 
Ben Affleck's adaptation of Tony Mendez's book, earned 3 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. 
Affleck lost (surprisingly) the Best Direction award to Ang Lee for the life of Pi, he was acknowledged though at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. 

So, we still have another 2 days till the big night,  and we are out of Oscar winning films! Well, not exactly.. Tomorrow we are going to take a look at some losers that deserved a better fate and on Sunday, well, it's betting time! Who will win this year? Who should win this year? Who I want to win this year?? Frontrunners and underdogs: they all have a chance to win an (uncle) Oscar!

Today we take a look at the picture that dominated the 84th Academy Awards: The Artist. Although released in 2011, this is a silent, black and white film. The innovative film by Michel Hazanavicious, won also Best Direction, Best Actor in a leading role (Jean Dujardin) , Best Costume Design and Best Original Score.

The competition in the Best Picture category was hard, with Alexander Payne's The Descendants, The Help, Midnight in Paris and Moneyball being some of the other nominated films, The Artist's old school Hollywood glow though, did the trick for the Academy and earned the title of the best film in 2011.

The 83rd Academy Awards, were filled with great performances nominations. So no wonder, a film based on great performances by both main and supporting roles, won the Best Picture award.

The King's Speech, the true story of King George VI and his speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch become worthy of his rise to the throne, gave Colin Firth his first Academy Award (with his second consecutive nomination, after A Single Man) and won another two awards: Best Directing & Best Original Screenplay.

With 5 days to go until day 0, today we take a look back at the 82nd Academy Awards.

In a year that 10 (!) films were competing for Best Picture, it was an even bigger win for The Hurt Locker, especially, since it was competing with the innovative Avatar. Another big win for the film, was that Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to ever win the Best Direction Award. 

Fun fact: Bigelow's ex husband (James Cameron) was also nominated that year for Best Direction (Avatar)... 

The film took home another 4 awards: Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing.

Slumdog Millionaire, the feel good film by Danny Boyle, dominated the 81st Academy Awards, winning 8 awards: Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Original Music Score, Best Original Song and Best Achievement in Sound Mixing! Funny, raw, optimistic, Slumdog Millionaire, was both a box office hit & an award winning film. Jai Ho! 

The Great Escape is a 1963 film, about the escape of Allied prisoners of war from a German camp during World War II, based on the true story of the mass escape, as narrated at the book The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill.

The film features many stars of the time: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, James Garner, Charles Bronson and Richard Attenborough among others.

The Plot

What happens when you imprison several masters of escape and forgery at the same camp? Well, what anyone would expect: they try to escape. What is extraordinary about this (true) story is that the prisoners will attempt to escape all at the same time - all 250 of them.

The film follows the planning, the preparation and the attempt itself.

Despite the fact that this is a war film, the focus is mainly on the characters and how its individual skill and psychology, affect the progress of the plan.

Even though (spoiler alert) the attempt was not successful (at least not 100%), the feeling that the film brings out is that it’s all about spirit and hope. When Steve McQueen’s character is lead once more to the cooler (the camp’s prison), he immediately starts to play catch and  throw inside his prison cell, as he did each time he was locked there, making the guard wonder how can he keep his cool after having his escape dreams crashed so many times. And this is how the film ends, showing us that it doesn’t matter if you lose a battle. You have to keep trying to win the war.

Awards
The film was nominated for Best film Editing at the 1964 Academy Awards, as well as for Best Picture-Drama at the same year’s Golden Globes.



Reception

It was one of the highest grossing films of 1963, earning $11,7M at the Box Office, having a budget of $4M.

My Film Club

Week #6 featured a great war film that had received an Academy Award nomination. Week #7, given it’s going to be the Oscar weekend, will feature a film that gained 5 Academy Awards

Next week’s film: One flew over the cuckoo’s nest (1975)

8 days to the 86th Academy Awards, and today we remember the film that won the 79th Acadeny Awards for Best Picture. The Departed dominated the Oscars and made history when Martin Scorsese received his first Academy Award for Directing. 

An amazing film that also received awards for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay & Best Achievement in Film Editing. Did not receive any awards for performances though - to my dissapointment..

An underdog for sure, Crash made us all wonder, back in 2005, where exactly did it come from!
There were some hints at the Golden Globes, where it won Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, but nobody thought it would win Best Picture at the 78th Academy Awards! Especially when the other nominated films were Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich! 

Despite all that, the film also earned another two Academy Awards, Best Original Screenplay and Best Achievement in Film Editing.