Local Newswire Where can you see Oscar-nominated films in the Twin Cities?

Oscar season typically means panic for moviegoers everywhere. As most studios assume that every voting member of the Academy has short-term memory loss, most “award-worthy” films are saved until the last few months of the year, meaning that even the most dedicated film fan can find his or herself scrambling to get everything watched by the time Billy Crystal whips out his trusted movie parody show opener.

People in coastal cities have art house cinemas seemingly everywhere (or at least this is how we imagine New York), but for those of us in Minnesota, things are a little bit sparser. A few of the major nominees (The Help, Tree of Life, Moneyball, Midnight In Paris) are on DVD already and a few of the wider releases (Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and the thankfully much shorter-named War Horse) are playing at the bigger theater chains.

But what about those of us who care about foreign films and whatever that movie with Glenn Close is about? That’s why we have Landmark Cinemas—and while that might mean a trip to Uptown or Edina to see Michelle Williams play Marilyn Monroe, we still have the option.

If we were a betting publication (and we are), we’d place our best picture money on the silent film The Artist, and while it will certainly get a bigger theater push with all the buzz it’s getting, those of you who want to beat your friends to the punch can see it now at the Edina Cinema. Meryl Streep will have quite the fight on her hands against The Help’s Viola Davis, but you can see her much-lauded performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady at The Lagoon. That mean’s Michelle Williams is going to end up empty handed, but her My Week With Marilyn is also playing at Lagoon, while Gary Oldman’s first nominated performance (!) in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is showing at the Edina Cinema. Edina will also start screening Glenn Close’s cross-dressing period dramedy, Albert Nobbs, on January 27.

Four of the Best Foreign Film nominations (A Separation, In Darkness, Footnote, and Monsieur Lazhar) will also be opening between now and the awards ceremony on February 26 at both the Lagoon and the Edina Cinema, while the Lagoon will helpfully package both the live-action and animated short films together for viewing starting on February 10.

This may not be the most exciting Oscar season in recent memory (Extremely Loud getting a Best Picture nomination with a Rotten Tomato score below 50 percent strikes us as particularly egregious, an F from The A.V. Club, and not to mention the Fassbender snub), but you’ll inevitably end up going to an Oscar party, and who doesn’t want to be the smartest one in the room?