You shook me all night long....

AC/DC is quite possibly one of the most underappreciated bands of all time. I really have no basis for this assertion, nor do I know anything about AC/DC other than, well, really that one song. Sometimes you just have to rely on instinct, even if it leads you to make statements that probably cannot be backed up with one shred of evidence. Similarly, I think that "Dirty Dancing" is quite possibly the greatest movie ever made. Think about it. An all-star cast. Edgy subject matter. Dance sequences that make "Dancing with the Stars" look like a show featuring a bunch of washed-up celebrities dancing for the first time. Some of the greatest lines ever uttered on film. "Nobody puts Baby in the corner." Pure cinematic gold. How this movie never won an Oscar (it didn't, did it?) I'll never know.

Which brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves. Movies that are made for the sole purpose of winning someone an Oscar. Sure, the Wife and I have made a point to try to see all of last year's Best Picture nominees, but I don't consider any of them to be purely Oscar vehicles. A movie about Johnny Cash would do well under any circumstance, as would movies like "Munich" and "Crash." No, the movies I am talking about are movies like "The Hours." Seriously, if "Dirty Dancing" is the greatest movie ever made (and I'm not really serious about that, in case you hadn't figured it out (which I'm sure you had, since you're smart and all)), then "The Hours" is the absolute worst movie ever made. Now, I know the Wife is going to disagree on this, as she has every other time we've discussed this movie, but I've never had a movie make me want to put a bullet through my brain before. Okay, I'll admit, the whole drawing parallels between different generations of women thing was rather interesting and thought provoking. But if the overriding point of this movie wasn't to gain as many Oscar nods as possible, I'll attempt to remove various essential organs with a rusty spoon. And that's what annoys me. That wasn't a movie that was made to entertain people that just happened to have a great cast and pick up some Oscar nods along the way. Instead, it was a movie made for critics and the people that vote for the award. And frankly, if I'm going to pay money to go see a movie, I want to feel like the people that made it actually cared whether or not I had a good time instead of prostituting themselves to the Academy.

Well, that's all I've got. Remember, AC/DC and "Dirty Dancing" are worth your time, "The Hours" is not. Oh, one more thing. You know what else is vastly underrated? That would be you, dear readers. But don't worry. I appreciate you.