Story by Rebecca Neumann

Video by Graham

After polling 50 CHS students about their favorite Oscar nominated movie, it appears that the Academy’s opinion will not reflect the views of teenagers.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the favorite for Best Picture at the March 7 Academy Awards is “The Hurt Locker”. However, only 12 percent of CHS students polled answered “The Hurt Locker” as their favorite.

Junior Eric Piontek is one of the few who enjoyed the movie above the rest of the nominees.

“I liked ‘The Hurt Locker’ the best because it showed the soldiers’ every day lives and told about what’s going on over in Iraq,” Piontek said. “It was also funny at times. It told about the bomb diffusers which not many people hear about. They’re practically standing next to death which was cool to see.”

“Inglorious Basterds” is more popular, coming in at 14 percent. Sophomore Hilton Hardy chose it among the other movies because it had everything he wanted in a movie.

“It was my favorite movie of 2009 because Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite directors,” he said. “Plus, I personally really enjoy WWII movies. Also, I thought the final scenes were very intense and overall amazing.”

Hardy saw most of the nominated movies, but he does not think any come close to beating his favorite.

“All of the movies were amazing,” Hardy said. “Especially ‘Avatar’. But they didn’t have the all around feeling that ‘Inglorious [Basterds]’ gave you. It was either all action or all fantasy, while “Inglorious Basterds” had action, history, and humor combined into one amazing movie”

The most popular movie among the polled CHS students is the PG-rated Pixar movie, ‘Up’ with 37 percent, more than “Avatar” and “The Blind Side” combined.

This might come as a surprise, considering the competition the movie had and its differences from movies such as ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Inglorious Basterds,’ which are filled with violence. However, the mature aspects of the movie are what sophomore Jonathon Zuniga likes most about the movie.

“Well, I like Pixar movies to begin with, but ‘Up!’ was a little more maturely based,” Zuniga said. “Like in the beginning and the entire plot, there were tons of topics and ideas that I thought were not necessarily for kids. I liked that a lot, because it was really spreading out its appeal to older audiences. Not to mention [the movie] was
hilarious.”

According to the poll, there does not seem to be any real correlations to the different types of movies students enjoyed the most. The major blockbusters got big numbers, but so did the ‘The Hurt Locker’, which grossed only a fraction as much. Not surprisingly, the very low grossing movies ‘Precious’, ‘An Education’ and ‘A Serious Man’ received
no votes.

It is unlikely ‘Up!’ will win Best Picture. In recent years it has gone to obscure movies most people do not know anything about. But hopefully, CHS students can be happy with either ‘The Hurt Locker’ or ‘Up in the Air’ because they are the most likely winners.

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