I've failed to meet one of my New Thing goals for 2013. See, I'm bad with movies - I think I've written before that if I'm investing more than 2 hours in something on TV, chances are it's going to be a sporting event and not a movie.

But one of my New Things was to watch more movies.

And I was hoping to see a bunch (at least 5) of the 10 'Best Picture'-nominated movies before the Oscars ceremony.

I didn't come close.

But I have now seen 2, which is 2 more than most years.

Friday night my wife and I watched 'Argo'.

How we watched it was interesting too - it became available on FIOS On Demand on Monday. So we ordered it and watched it that way, which I thought was pretty neat. Because I'm willing to bet it's still in some theaters in some places. I imagine this is the wave (way? wave.) of the future - movies available through all media pretty soon after theater release. (I realize this coincides with the DVD release...but still, I'm sure it's still in theaters somewhere.)

Anyway, we watched the movie in our living room. I'm sure it loses something on our TV rather than on the big screen...but that doesn't change the fact that the movie was great.

I realize some of those details were Hollywood-ized, but just the general gist of the story being true - amazing. And I sure am glad that type at the end of the movie cleared up some of the questions that were burning me up, like "if it was classified, how do we know the details to make a movie about it?"

I'm not going to get into specifics of the movie, in case someone is planning on seeing the movie and isn't looking for a spoiler. And if you're on the fence - see it.

There was some strong language (which was mostly amusing), but overall I was impressed too at how relatively clean the movie was. It wasn't overly violent, there was nothing gratuitous - it was just a solid, solid movie.

And I don't know about Oscar slights or snubs for direction...but I do know that when you as a viewer already have a general sense of what the ending of the movie is going to be, and you still feel all the drama and tension, well, that means the people making the movie did something very right.

I had hoped to see 'Silver Linings Playbook' before tonight's Oscars...I don't know which other two would have been on my list of 5. But it seems like the 2 I did see - 'Lincoln' and 'Argo' - are the favorites to win 'Best Picture'.

And if I didn't see the 'Best Picture'...well, I still saw 2 pretty good pictures.