Oscars Preview: Best Picture – Part I

There are nine films up for Best Picture at this Sunday’s Academy Awards, and while most people haven’t seen all the films yet, there are a few you might not have even heard of.

FOX News Radio’s Sabrina Sabbagh previews the category:

Four of the nine Best Picture nominees are considered low budget compared to the other five blockbusters they’re up against, and two of them are virtually unknown.

(Medved) “A film like “Amour,” which is a very hard-hitting French movie, or “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which was like a micro-budgeted film, it wasn’t even shot with SAG talent or Directors Guild talent.”

Harry Medved with movie ticketing site Fandango says, even though they were hard to find in the theaters, the Academy was watching because “Amour” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” also nabbed Best Actress nominations.

(“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together.”

The other low-budget hits first started in limited release before a big nationwide push.

(“Zero Dark Thirty”) “When was the last time you saw bin Laden?”

With no big stars, “Zero Dark Thirty” came in at a price tag of $40 million, and even though “Silver Linings Playbook” had an all-star cast, the actors worked for scale, bringing that film budget to $21 million.

(“Silver Linings Playbook”) “I hate my illness and I want to control it.”