i like motion pictures

Hugo is, i can only say, precisely what the Academy loves.

it is cinematic magic, it has a heartfelt story and endearing characters, and most of all, it has an award-winning theme: an homage to filmmaking.

how can the Academy resist that?

i would suppose the only dilemma for judges is the small fact that its competition is The Artist, another moving examination of cinema.

(while watching, i couldnt help but wonder, if Hugo's an Oscar hit, the oft-neglected Harry Potter films surely are too.)

coming away, i feel Hugo's greatest edge is its scintillating comparison of life to machines. the film's set in a train station; little Hugo Cabret's a clockwork prodigy, in the footsteps of his father and uncle; Papa Georges run a toy shop; the film's about making movies. films that focus on life and people always work, and when you can expose the dichotomy they have with something as mechanical as mechanics, it just makes the audience applaud in fascination.

Hugo: "I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason too."

i must say, big budgets make things tick, and here it helped me like this film. but i dont adore it at all.