Task number 35: Watch every film that has won Best Picture at the Oscars

On 15 Feb 2009 I rented No Country for Old Men (Best Picture Winner 2007) from Moviebank. Not bad. Very slow-moving but great at building up tension, and pleasingly indie-ish and non-Hollywood. And Javier Bardem played an excellent psychopathic villain. But, annoyingly, my Moviebank card had just expired so I had to put another £10 onto it in order to use the credit I already had! >:(


On 22 February 2009, the Best Picture award for 2008 was won by Slumdog Millionaire. As I had already seen this on 20 January 2009 (within the 1001 days), I could therefore tick off another Best Film (albeit retrospectively). Prior to the ceremony, my chances of doing this were quite good, as I'd also seen Slumdog Millionaire's main rival for this award, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, since the start of my challenge.

I loved this film to bits, and cheered (either outwardly or inwardly) every time it won an award. I thought they were all thoroughly deserved. I don't believe I need to elaborate on this any more for those who've seen the film, and for those who haven't, the best way to find out why I think so much of it isn't to read anything I could write.

On the night of 28 February 2009 I watched the 1940 Best Picture winner, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, on TV. It started slow and seemingly quite predictable, but the ending was exciting and confounded the expectations I'd had at the beginning. By the time the film began to approach the climax, I could absolutely see why it deserved to win Best Picture.

On 3 March I rented Million Dollar Baby (2004). Rebekah's post on wotmania pretty much said it all: Clint Eastwood + Morgan Freeman = movie magic. Well, not quite all, because Hilary Swank was also very powerful. No wonder she won Best Leading Actress.



On 15 March The Departed (2006) was on TV. It was extremely cool. I never thought I'd see Leonardo diCaprio being cool. Also, I now know why everyone thinks so much of Jack Nicholson. And Martin Scorsese. I need to see more of his films.

Also, I was really kept on my toes trying to remember who was on what side and which of the two main characters knew what about the other one, but I expect that's just me being slow.



For my birthday my mum very kindly bought me membership of LoveFilm, which should make my progress with this task much faster! On 22 January I watched my first LoveFilm DVD, 1938 winner You Can't Take It With You. It was rather moralising, but still quite enjoyable, with lots of comic moments. Thinking back to Rebecca, it seems that most of the old ones appear quite badly made to my modern eyes at first, but as they go on I'm able to see what made them deserving winners.