Beau Peep Notice Board

In fact we should all get an Oscar just for viewing - not a full size one of course.

Great idea, Diane, as was the silver one.

For the past few years, I have tried to watch as many of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture as I can. Mostly streaming before the ceremony, and occasionally at the cinema. A few I haven't bothered with (possibly my loss more than theirs), usually based on genre or subject matter. But never reviews - I try hard to avoid them before watching anything so that I can make up my own mind, and often strongly disagree with the majority opinion as a result (yes, I'll have a quick look after watching... and often a chuckle). Last year, I agreed with the winner (All Quiet On The Western Front), but was totally unimpressed by Triangle Of Sadness and Tár... and found The Banshees Of Inisherin excruciating to watch (still makes me wince thinking about it).

This year, I've only seen three of the nominated films so far, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed for very different reasons, but also for the fact they were all biopics of real people. Oppenheimer was brilliant, and deserved it's Oscar in my view. Maestro was also a great watch and unlucky to miss out on winning any of its eight nominated categories. But the one I enjoyed most was Barbie, which totally surprised me. It was the only one I saw at the cinema, and I went with my 8-year-old granddaughter, who had seen it only two days before, but did an amazing job of keeping the lid on any spoilers (although I knew when most of them were coming, as she looked to see my reaction a split second before - which was adorable and added to my entertainment!). I hugely enjoyable movie, and in many ways deeply profound... (though mostly not. ).

It seems to me that there are too few Oscars handed out in the most important categories. It is also hard to judge movies against each other when they are so different. Maybe time for some new categories such as comedy, sci-fi, fantasy etc and give out more awards to the people the audiences have heard of.  And I would for sure give those nominated but not won a silver Oscar to take home for their mantles. 

I think this year must have been a record for how many movies people could stream at home before the big event. Made the show much more interesting when you have seen a batch of them :-)

Normally I mostly watch to jot down titles of movies I may like to see one day and of course ogle the marvelous outfits. 

We then checked everywhere to make sure a whole batch of them weren't roosting somewhere but the house was clear.

This had me rushing to find out what the collective noun is for bats, Roger. There are several, all beginning with a 'c' - colony, cauldron, camp and (when in flight, en masse) cloud.

But "batch" is simply inspired genius!

Great stories, Tarqs and Diane. I really must get round to doing something interesting I can share on here!

I've just remembered something that happened four or five months ago. One morning, my wife announced that she'd gone to the bathroom during the night and had been greeted by a bat flying around the landing. She hadn't wanted to wake me with the news. When I asked if she was sure she wasn't dreaming, she replied that she didn't think so. This doubt was enough to convince that the event had never happened. Two nights later, she headed up to bed at around 10 p.m., leaving me downstairs watching golf or something. About 30 seconds later, she returned, rather white-faced, to say the bat was flapping around the landing again. I went up to check and there it was, like something out of a horror movie. My wife told me to open the front door and then go back upstairs and chase it out. "Oh, yeah", I responded "like it's going to immediately to fly downstairs and out the door just to help us out?"
It did. We then checked everywhere to make sure a whole batch of them weren't roosting somewhere but the house was clear. We guess that the bat had somehow got into the house and couldn't get out until I obligingly opened the door. As I said, this was around 5 months ago and we haven't seen anything since so we presume it was a one-off visit. I'm rather glad about that...