I look forward to Academy Awards night every year. I love the show and in the past several years my girls have developed a taste for them as well. To me, the Academy Awards are great family entertainment with glamour, fun, humor, cultural knowledge, and a touch of politics and current events. Something for everyone! (Like 1967's Best Music winner A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.)

I have been watching the Academy Awards since I was young. I can't even remember the first year I tuned in. I always watched with my mom. Now, I watch with my girls and call my mom at least twice during each show. Call it a tradition (which reminds me of 1971 Best Picture nominee Fiddler on the Roof).

Unlike Laremy Legel, Film.com Movies Editor, who describes them as "an opportunity to use the bathroom," I enjoy an Oscar montage. Perhaps it's because I love the old movies and stars at least as much as (sometimes more) I do the new. Perhaps it's because a montage provides opportunities to appreciate the volume of American cinematic history with which we are familiar, while tantalizing us with the enormity of what we have yet to experience. Although they haven't yet seen it, the girls recognized clips from Schindler's List from a documentary, Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, which we saw earlier this winter. They know they are not yet ready to see Schindler's List, but they also know it exists and are able to recognize even momentary glimpses of it. Five-year-old Boy Wonder also found something familiar in a montage; he was sad to see that Betty Hutton, whom he recognized from the 1951 Academy Award winner for Best Music, Annie Get Your Gun, died this year.

Ratatouille was the only nominee that each and every member of our family saw this year, and we were all delighted that it won Best Animated Feature. The girls are curious about one of its competitors, Persepolis, as am I, but we have agreed that, as it is rated PG-13, I should check it out first.

The girls want to see many of this year's nominees, like Juno, a movie I adored but they will have to wait years before they watch. The wait doesn't seem to bother them too much, though. They have learned, as I did, that these movies will be available to them when they are ready. In the meantime, they can watch the Oscars and enjoy glimpses of the "old" films, which they may or may not have already seen, and the rest of the show can continue to inform their must-see lists for the future. I just hope that they continue to watch with me; it's more fun that way. And when they have grown up, moved away and procured televisions of their own, I will keep the telephone close on Oscar night and look forward to their calls.

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