WAITING FOR THE OSCARS: WHICH ONES HAVE I SEEN? 12 YEARS A SLAVE, HER, THE GREAT BEAUTY

Oscar Weekend is finally here! The 86th Annual Academy Awards air live tonight Sunday, March 2, at 8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT on ABC, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres.
Have you seen any of the nominated movies? I've seen only: 12 Years A Slave, Her, The Great Beauty.  What about you instead? Looking forward to tonight's show,  where some of the anxious nominees will become excited winners, let's discuss these three movies which are among them.

12 Years A Slave

The true terrible story of Salomon Northup, 12 Years a Slave,  is a movie based on an incredibly touching account of one man's fight for survival and freedom. Salomon is a free middle class black man living in North America, a musician, when he is deceived, kidnap and forced to live as a slave for twelve years. 

As in other of his films - Hunger or Shame for instance - director McQueen wants the audience leave the theatre disturbed and upset. No censorship, no filters: the ugly truth is there in all its tragicality, it hurts, it shocks, it makes you sorrowful. Neither the happy ending can relieve you from the sense of loss and brutality you experience watching this movie.

BOOKS ON SCREEN: 12 YEARS A SLAVE, THE RAILWAYMAN, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

From this autobiographical book, Steve McQueen's major new film starring Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Quvenzhane Wallis. A great, touching story nominated as Best Movie for 2014 Oscars. One of the latest movies I've seen. Good but not as much as I expected. What about reading the book now? I've got it in my to be read soon list, the ebook from amazon kindle store is just a bargain.

Solomon Northup is a free man, living in New York. Then he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Drugged, beaten, given a new name and transported away from his wife and children to a Louisiana cotton plantation, Solomon will die if he reveals his true identity. This is the searing true story of his twelve years as a slave: the endless brutality, daily humiliations and constant fear, but also the small ways in which he and his fellow men try to survive. Twelve Years a Slave is a unique, unflinching record of slavery from the inside, and the incredible account of one man whose life was ripped from him - and who fought to get it back. "A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's "many thousands gone" who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation". (Saturday Review). 

"I could not believe that I had never heard of this book. It felt as important as Anne Frank's diary, only published nearly a hundred years before". (Steve McQueen).