What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

Mister Tee
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

Post by Mister Tee »

dws1982 wrote:Unfortunately Netflix is pretty much worthless for watching Oscar contenders that are more than 30 years old--and even within the past 30 years, it's mostly going to be the most mainstream, well-known titles. I may cancel Netflix altogether soon and only subscribe for a month or two per year to catch-up on Oscar contenders.
I know the concept of Netflix-on-disc is viewed as antediluvian at this point, but there are a whole lot of old movies available for rent that way. I don't expect the service to survive, given how streaming has conquered the world, but it's where you'll find a huge number of movies from earlier decades.

Netflix streaming (and I have both) is mostly a TV-series service, with exceptions for documentary and animated Oscar hopefuls.
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

Post by dws1982 »

Unfortunately Netflix is pretty much worthless for watching Oscar contenders that are more than 30 years old--and even within the past 30 years, it's mostly going to be the most mainstream, well-known titles. I may cancel Netflix altogether soon and only subscribe for a month or two per year to catch-up on Oscar contenders.

Many of those extra channels on Prime usually offer a free week trial. You can watch for free for a week, just make sure you cancel before the week ends! You would have to plan viewing out in advance, but I've done it a few times when there was something I wanted to see. (Most channels offer one free week per year, so a year after your free trial ends, you could do another free trial.)
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

Post by OscarGuy »

What's frustrating is that I just started searching Just Watch for where the films are playing and few of them are playing on Amazon Prime or Netflix. A lot on are on specialty channels you can get with Amazon for an extra amount per month. I may be abandoning my task sooner than I expected.
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

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Reza wrote:
Precious Doll wrote:There are a couple of films that may turn up like Portrait of Chieko, Hoa-Binh, Sal of Singapore & Three Russian Girls but I don't hold much hope for anything else.
Please check your message box.
Thanks Reza. Very much appreciated.
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

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Precious Doll wrote:There are a couple of films that may turn up like Portrait of Chieko, Hoa-Binh, Sal of Singapore & Three Russian Girls but I don't hold much hope for anything else.
Please check your message box.
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

Post by Okri »

Cool. I tend to get quite daunted when I try to tackle these projects - especially since I'm hardly a completist when it comes to AMPAS even now.
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

Post by Precious Doll »

It's a huge job to track down Oscar winners and nominees.

When I got interested in cinema and the Oscars I initially only stuck with then contemporary films but and then only the major categories at that (film, acting, director, screenplay, foreign films). Then as I started going to repertory cinema I naturally included Oscar winners and major nominees. As a result I saw lots of classics on the big screen. It was great to discover films like All About Eve, Gaslight, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard,To Kill A Mockingbird, Now Voyager, The Heiress, The Best Years of Our Lives, etc on the big screen were they beyond but becoming harder to see as they were meant to be seen. Later I started also watching films on video but it wasn't until 1991 that I actually complied a list of all the films I hadn't seen from the picture, acting and director categories and concentrated on viewing them on VHS, though the big screen was always my first preference.

It wasn't until 1996 during an extensive holiday to the US that I picked up a book in New Orleans that listed every film nominated for an Academy Award in every feature film category except for documentary feature. I then added everything I hadn't seen and ever since then have tried to track down the all the films listed.

As things stand at the moment there are only 27 films I have not seen (not included films from 2019 which I won't include on this list until the end of this year if I haven't seen them by then). Most of the 27 films are either lost, partially lost or are only available in archives in the US (eg The White Parade which is available to view at the ULCA on video tape). There are a couple of films that may turn up like Portrait of Chieko, Hoa-Binh, Sal of Singapore & Three Russian Girls but I don't hold much hope for anything else.

You'd be surprised what you can find on YouTube alone.....
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Re: What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

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If you want links to any films let me know.
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What I've Seen and Where I Need to Go

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Probably no one will care about this, but I'm posting anyway. I had originally started making lists of Oscar nominees I hadn't seen, but it got a bit cumbersome, so I thought I would start a bit smaller scale, which might make the rest of it easier to take care of. I'm going to try to watch every Oscar winner in categories other than Foreign Language Film, the documentary categories, and the short film categories. I will hit foreign films as I go, just to complete years in which I haven't seen them, but they are slightly lower priority at this juncture.

To prepare for this, I took all of the winners and tried to find the easiest path to victory.

Here's what I discovered.

I have seen all of the winners in two categories: Best Picture (a project I completed years ago and have kept up ever since) and Best Animated Feature (this is my big expertise category). I'm missing 5 films in adapted screenplay, 7 in supporting Actress (we covered this one on my site almost a decade ago), and 8 in Directing and Makeup & Hairstyling. The former is easy to explain because of the Best Picture run-through and the latter is just a strange coincidence as I watch a lot of fantasy films where this category tends to get the most representation. Nothing else is above 80% watched. My worst categories are, obviously, foreign language film with 55 unseen (the only category I'm below 50% on), 42 in original song (though I've listened to all of the songs separately), costume design, and lead actress. Those plus original screenplay are the only categories I'm below 60% on. The screenplay category has almost everything lumped into it, so a lot of the older films I haven't seen.

In looking at my best years, I'll start with the % of category winners I've seen, so a Ben-Hur victory in 11 categories counts as 11 categories seen.
1997, 2003, 2011, and 2018 where I have seen all of the non-foreign language winners with 2003 and 2018 being completely complete having seen foreign film as well.

Other years where I've seen 90% or more of the winners (11):
1961, 1992, 1993, 1998, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2017

41 years I've seen 75% or more of the winners, 74 I've seen half or more of the winners.

Which leaves only 18 below that number. Those years are:
1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1943, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1963, 1971, 2019

Some of those early years are going to be either tough or impossible to complete. 2019 was my slowest moviegoing year since I was a kid. One of my friends, with whom I would have seen a lot of those movies, was hit by financial difficulties and so we didn't see nearly as many as I wanted to. We kept putting off excursions until the film left theaters. I'm certain we would have seen Joker, Once Upon a Time, and 1917 in the theater. That would have added 7 winners right there.

If you want to know about the number of winning films I've seen, that changes a lot of these.

The 4 categories in which I've seen all the winners obviously stay the same. There are only 9 years in which I've seen 90% or more of the films honored, 27 years where I've seen 75% or more, 56 in which I've seen 50% or more. There are only 8 years in which I've seen 10% or fewer of the winners (1929, 1930, 1931, 1935, 1936, 1943, 1946, 1954)

The reason I split them was that I wanted to clear years more quickly. So, I ranked the years I'll finish off first by the number of categories that I have outstanding (start with the fewest and going to the most) and then I'll compare which ones have the fewest number of films in order to complete the year. I may actually swap this. I'll have to think about which will be most efficient.
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