A Beautiful Mind

And this week's Friday night movie has been... A Beautiful Mind!

Best Picture Oscar winner no.: 74 (2001)

Yep, we're skipping over the 1990s simply because I have already seen them all. 
But in a way, perhaps it is fitting that I'm going straight from the 1980s to the 2000s. Why? Well, both decades share parallels: They both follow two heavyweight decades and, with the passage of time, look very pale compared to previous Best Picture winners. 
Still the eighties ending up surprising me so it would be interesting to see if something similar happens with the 2000s....

At time of writing, I am two thirds of the way through this year long undertaking. And it is at this point that I have come to recognise some recurring elements that appear in the Best Picture Oscar winners. Of course, it is not willingly but this notion of Oscar Bait seems to have up in the past two decades. 
Mind you, this is a post-Shakespeare in Love world we live in and now having a movie that has no other purpose other than to score big at the Oscars are now going to be more frequent. Indeed, I suspect that in the weeks ahead, I'm going to see Harvey Weinstein's name a lot....

But if this movie is a product of a post-Shakespeare in Love world, I would argue it owes it's existence more to Forrest Gump: It tells the story of a man of extraordinary ability and of a life lived. 
Personally, I found this movie very long and with some dull moments - seriously you could shave off twenty minutes and no one would've noticed - but the real strength of this movie is it's use of mathematics and it's portrayal of schizophrenia.
And hey: who wouldn't want Paul Bettany as their roommate?