For Academy Award Consideration: The Help

[Casey]

This was one of the three films I was most hoping would arrive at our house (the other two haven't shown up as yet; it's the beginning of the Oscar season), but this was SO MUCH better than I ever thought it would be!

Far, far better, by leagues, than anything I ever thought it would be.

On the back of our screener cover it says:

For Your Consideration [for Academy Award nomination]:

And the categories they ask to be considered are:

Best Picture
Best Director
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Actress
Best Supporting Actress
Best Cinematography
Best Film Editing
Best Art Direction
Best Costume Design
Best Makeup
Best Original Score
Best Original Song
Best Sound Mixing
Best Sound Editing

I don't know enough (and I haven't seen enough of the potential contenders) to judge on Score, Song, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing (in none of these categories do I have the slightest amount of knowledge or expertise), but for all the other categories...

Yes, Academy Award nominations please.

This film is based on a novel, so it is fictional, but as has always been true of the very best novels, this is one of the truest depictions of actual life that you will ever see. I was crying for seems like all the film through. Incredible portrait of what it was like during the Civil Rights era, and how astounding it is that our president is who he is and that our First Lady is the descendant of American slaves.

Absolutely amazing reviews (too many, and too lengthy, to reproduce here), but every one of them is richly deserved.

If you have any interest at all in the Civil Rights era, and how it affected "just ordinary" Americans in the South, and how we got from "there" to "here," see this film.

The Help merits a mantel full of Oscar statues, and I think that many of them will manifest come Academy Awards night next year.

(And something I never thought I would say: thank God there is no Coen Brothers film this year to compete.)