A few weeks ago, The Peoples' Choice Awards kicked things off, followed by this weekend's Golden Globe awards. The Golden Globes are sort of the 'crystal ball' to the Oscars, so I'm already gearing up for some weekend-long movie theater marathons.

Starting this week, I am officially cutting my hours at work back by one day and for now, that day will be Friday... which also happens to be hubby's day off too! Yay!!! So we'll be spending Friday's at the theater between now and March! :-)

Since they will now have 10 Best Picture nominees, we have a lot of movies to watch. But then I have to ask myself if watching all the movies are really worth it, because there's so much praise for Avatar... do any other films really stand a chance against it? I'm a fan of underdog films that actually say something more than "save the planet" or "government sucks" so we'll see...

Before I share my list of must-see-before-March movies, I had a very "Oh, crap, I'm old" moment... James Cameron got up to accept his first GG win for Avatar tonight, and I just said to Sean "Man! He is looking old!" I remember when he won for "Titanic"... he had blonde hair, a gotee and looked about 15 years younger!"... ... ... ... that's when it hit me... Titanic WAS nearly 15 years ago. (13 to be exact) Oh my. my, my, my. (Here's a then and now picture:)

To be fair to Mr. Cameron... Here's a photo of me from 1997, and one from this year. (Here's a then and a now pic...)

Ok, so now on to my list of movies...

1. Avatar

2. The Hurt Locker

3. Precious

4. Nine

5. Invictus

6. The Lovely Bones

7. Amelia

8. An Education

9. The Informant

10. The Burning Plain

11. The Boys Are Back

12. Bright Star (Only b/c some have compared Abby Cornish to Kate Winslet. Doubtful. But I'd like to see what performance begets such a suggestion!)

13. Shutter Island

14. Taking Woodstock

15. 500 Days Of Summer

1. UP

2. Up in the Air

3. A Single Man

4. A Serious Man

5. The Road

6. Get Low

7. Broken Embraces

1. Inglorious Basterds (well, I watched this bloody film with my fingers over my eyes 99% of the time...)

2. Julie & Julia

3. District 9 (I don't see how this could be nominated....)

4. Where The Wild Things Are (Quite possibly one of the WORST movies I've ever seen!)

5. Star Trek

6. Public Enemies

Quite a few of these movies have yet to even hit theatres... the rules of Oscar noms always confuse me. So I guess I'll just have to wait and see who the real nominees are when they are announced on February 2.