I’d Like To (Blank) The Academy is a blog/newsletter where we (Ellen & Tyler) watch every Best Picture nominee and dazzle you with opinions you did not ask for. Yes, we really mean every movie ever nominated. Yes, we realize how many movies that is. And yes, we realize we have a problem.
In each post we’ll recap a randomly-selected nominee, ranging anywhere from the very first Academy Awards in 1929 to this year’s batch of nominees. We’ll talk about what we did and didn’t like about the movie, make some jokes and puns along the way, and close out by filling in the titular Blank, cutting through the glitz and the glitter to let The Academy know how we, very normal people, feel about them nominating it.
If ILTBTA is a giant, buttery tub of popcorn, then the kernels of its creation began with a Valentine’s Day gift from Tyler to Ellen. It was early 2020, before you knew who Anthony Fauci was and masks were only for Halloween and Jim Carrey. Even before we started dating, we would both make an effort to see as many of the current Best Picture nominees as we could. Soon after a trip to our local theatre, Tyler thought of the perfect gift for the equally list-loving Ellen: a checklist of every Best Picture nominee, all 571 of them. So after having some time on his hands at work, and with some help from our trusted pal Wikipedia, what we creatively dubbed “The Spreadsheet” was born.
We’ve since continued to slowly work our way through The Spreadsheet, checking off and commenting on movies we’ve heard of but never seen, movies we’ve never heard of but ended up loving, and some movies that were neither up our alleys nor in our neighborhoods. The idea of sharing our Spreadsheet comments with the masses started out as a joke, but we joked about it enough that it became less of a joke and more of an inevitability. Plus, as two white yuppies we’re actually legally obligated to start a podcast. And we quickly learned we lack the time and talent for a podcast, so here’s a newsletter!
We hope that by sharing this little mid-/post-pandemic hobby of ours, we can not only make you laugh, but also prompt you to watch some movies that may not have come across your desk otherwise. So kick your feet up, grab some popcorn and your neighbor’s ex-boyfriend’s parents’ HBO Max log-in, and join us through our Best Picture nominee journey on I’d Like To Blank The Academy.
