Oscar week

Shawn and I have each had the distinguished honor of coming in last place at Beckstead Oscar Parties over the past couple of years, resulting in consolation prizes like "Snake Eater" (let us know if you ever want to borrow it), so I have tried to dedicate a little more time to proper research for the past two years.
Here's some of the highlights this year:
At The Queen, we sat down the row from these people who seemed to really enjoy the fact that you're not actually required to clean up after yourself at the movies.
I think they might have used an entire tree's worth of napkins. Unfortunately, they were not thick enough to block the sound of their burping throughout the movie.
At Babel we were lucky enough to have our own personal narrator sitting behind us who, less than discretely, helped to fill in anything we might have missed ("that's her mother", "they're taking drugs", "he shot her").
Sadly, I missed much of Pan's Labyrinth because I'm kinda a wuss and couldn't watch the torture scenes.
We saw most of the documentaries thanks to the Balboa theater, which sucks because they don't have nachos, but is great because they do things like this. Plus they are across the street from Shanghai Dumpling King which almost makes up for there being no nachos. By the way, my dad should win the "sticking to his guns" award because he isn't going to be caught up in believing any "inconvenient truths" when they are really just theories.
I think the research paid off because it saved us from winning the loser's prize:
(does Nate look jealous to you?) Sadly, not only does Emily have to be seen with a copy of Life & Style on her table (Us Weekly is so much better) but she didn't even win for dressing up like Cate Blanchett.
It wasn't much of a competition though once we saw Steve in a nanny's house dress running around with two little white kids.
I guess Steve was voted into that part because he's apparently more Mexican that he is Male, or Becca just makes a great little boy.
I think Alex and Heather were kinda sad that they did all this work and there weren't even any movies that were that great.
Thanks anyway guys- and I'm sure it'll be better next year when we're watching Alex's movie!
(Paperback Dreams editing action shot)
Alex paid me to add that he won the Oscar contest at Le Video, "the biggest and best and most awesome and all knowing and in every way superior repository of movie knowledge in San Francisco and maybe the universe". And I think I'm also supposed to say something about how he knows more than everybody else.