Peter Parker #2 declares, “THIS IS CINEMA!”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! Longtime MCC readers know this time of year is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to CODA, and every Best Picture nominee from 1987 to the present, many of which were worth the hunt. You take the good, you take the bad, and so on.

In addition, this will be my third annual Oscars Quest Expanded Challenge, which was inspired by that darn pandemic — to see not just all the Best Picture nominees, but as many nominees as possible in all the other categories as well…

That was January 24th. Fast-forward to today, and I’ve watched all I can watch, for better or worse. A grand total of 53 different works are up for Oscars this year. As of this writing I’ve watched 50. Of the four irritating omissions:

• Ireland’s The Quiet Girl is coming to Indianapolis theaters March 10th, at the eleventh hour before the ceremony when we have an extremely busy week planned. [UPDATED 3/12/2023, 1:40 p.m.: I did fit it in and wrote about it in the nick of time.]
• The documentary All That Breathes is exclusive to HBO, which we don’t normally have. (Our cable company had another “Watchathon” weekend recently; this film’s HBO debut was the following Tuesday. Grrrrrrrr.)
• The international feature Argentina, 1985 is exclusive to Amazon Prime, which we’ve never had.
• The documentary short How Do You Measure a Year? has no streaming plan announced yet.

A perfect record would’ve been nice, but I’ll cope. I can mentally file it as “a Delaware Problem” and my heart will go on.

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