Thank you, No Country for Old Men. It came down to the final award of the night, but the heftier weighting we lend to Best Picture meant that my correct guesses outweighed Erika's correct guesses (though our totals matched). I also hitched my wagon to The Bourne Ultimatum, which won me a handful of technical category points. (I grudgingly admit that Erika deserves some credit for spotting Tilda Swinton.)
To recap our rules, it's one point for short film categories, three points for technical awards, five points for acting, writing, and directing, and nine points for best picture. I'm writing this here in the hope that next year, my wife will remember our scoring system and stop feigning surprise. Erika, it's been the same point system for four or five years now -- I'm not buying the "I didn't know it was worth that much" bit much longer.
It's now been two years since I lost, and back then I needed three straight wins just to break even. Now that it's in reach, I'll have to pay more attention in 2008. I wish I could believe that my recent success would cut down on Erika's trash talking, but I'm still at least two years away from that.
We didn't do too badly in terms of tracking down the movies. In the end, I was 5-for-5 on the best picture nominees, although it meant seeing both There Will Be Blood (spoiler: it turns out there was blood) and No Country for Old Men on Saturday. I made it home without driving off an overpass, but ... damn. That's a tough double feature right there. Javier Bardem in particular deserves his Oscar; that guy scared the crap out of me.
I was most proud of the day we both saw Atonement -- although not together. I went in the morning while Erika watched Casey, and then Erika took her turn in the afternoon while I watched the boy. Yes, we take this that seriously. But at least we saw the same one so we could talk about it later.
So this year ... what's with all the grim endings that knock the wind out of you? Last year brought us The Departed, so now everybody's gotta be rife with nihilism and hopelessness? And Juno failed to get us out of that rut, so brace yourselves for some dark fare in 2008. Somebody needs a hug.
