Oscar's Good Luck Charm

Years before there were stories in the news seemingly every day about economic crisis and budget cuts, hubby and i decided one item we would eliminate from our spending would be going to the movies. It's not that we don't want to help stimulate the economy, and it's not that we don't like movies---i would conservatively estimate that between video tape and dvds, we have more than 4000 movies in our
collection. So i'd say it's safe to say that we love movies. This was not an easy decision to make, because as was said we love movies. It was strictly a pragmatic choice: when we did go it was usually 3 times a month. At that time in nyc the cost of a movie ticket was $9.50 The current price is [i think] $11.00 per. Add to that what would be spent at the concession stand and if we took a cab for any shows that weren't playing in the neighborhood it was starting to take a pretty big chunk out of the ol' piggybank. we subscribe to the major premium movie channels so pretty much anything that we would have gone to the movie house to see we'd be seeing again within a few months of it playing at the theater, so it wasn't that big of a sacrifice. i tell you all that as a preface to the upcoming academy awards. Ocassionally as Oscar time drew near we would give in to temptation, and actually go to the movies. As coincidence would have it the movie we would choose ended up winning the academy award for best picture. Last year's winner of course being No Country For Old Men. We got to feeling like we were the good luck charm for the winning movie. Silly i know since clearly all the academy votes were already decided, just not revealed by the time we were taking our seats with the masses. Still it's fun to think that it might be true. On a side note i gotta say i'm scratching my head over the fact that Grand Torino did not get a nomination for best director or best picture. This year we haven't made the cinema trek, but we like Slumdog Millionaire's chances. Since we haven't torn a good luck ticket for Slumdog, it will be interesting to see if it takes Oscar home.


To see all Oscar's nominees, the daily events leading up to the 81st annual academy awards, and lots of cool things related to Hollywood's biggest night, check out the academy's official site at http://www.oscar.com/
The 81st Academy Awards airs live Sunday February 22 2009 8:00pmET 5:00pmPT on ABC