Inside Glimpse Into Movie Making

My husband is in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He got in a few years ago. We mostly enjoyed the membership by attending the Oscars a couple of times and watching all the movies via the screeners that come to our house. While it's fun to watch movies that are in the theaters--or maybe not even released yet--in the comfort of your own home, I have become less enthralled with the whole circus. Mostly because we have to watch an insane amount of movies in a short period of time. I know, you are all playing the smallest violins right now. But in order to view everything to vote responsibly, you pretty much have to watch 5-7 movies a week. After a long work day and tending to kids, it can become a bit of a chore to start a 3-hour movie at 9 at night.

Did I mention that I get up at 5:30 every weekday morning?

Because we're home-bodies, we don't often take advantage of other membership perks. The Academy has special screenings of movies along with panels of folks that made the movie. One of these caught my husband's eye for this past weekend, so we went to it.

The movie was Lincoln and the panel afterward featured Steven Spielberg, John Williams, Tony Kushner, Sally Field, and Daniel Day Lewis. My husband and I are HUGE Steven Spielberg fans (is there anyone out there who isn't?) and also find Daniel Day Lewis extremely talented.

The movie did not disappoint. It was brilliantly written, acted, and directed. The panel afterward was really fun. However, I have to say that I could have done with more Steven Spielberg and less Sally Field! To be fair, Sally did an excellent job in the movie. It's just really difficult for an actor to describe the process they use to achieve brilliance. Daniel Day Lewis couldn't really put it into words either.

I find how the process that a director takes to make his decisions to be the really interesting part of the movie-making process. Unfortunately, Steven graciously gave his colleagues more discussion time.

We're definitely going to have to go to these panels and screenings more often. We went to an off-Academy season one last year for Raiders of the Lost Ark that was a hoot!

Are there any movies coming out over the next few months that you're excited about seeing? Did you see anything yet this year that you thought had Best Picture potential?