With it being Valentine’s Day weekend, and all the buzz of the Oscars coming up later this month, it seemed like a perfect time for a COMBO LIST! When most think of Best Picture winners, you think sprawling historical epics like Gone With the Wind (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or Ben Hur (1959). War is a good place to find Oscar champions as well, such as Patton (1970), Schindler’s List (1993), and Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). But what about love? What about a sweeping romance? With that idea, I’ve scoured the 87 winners of the Best Picture Oscar and found the nine best love stories. Why nine? Because ten is what you were expecting, and with love being the theme, love should be unexpected and spontaneous… and also I could only really think of these 9. Any of these movies would be great to pop open a bottle of wine, dim the lights, and cuddle up with your significant other.

Check out the 9 choices below.

*Updated Below*

Last month it was announced that director Tarsem Singh had cast Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto in his upcoming Greek mythology film, War of Gods. If that wasn’t enough for the budding actress, she has now landed an always coveted role: the world famous Bond Girl.

Pinto has been cast as the female lead opposite of returning star Daniel Craig in the upcoming 23rd installment in the massive James Bond franchise, which has now entered its truly astounding 6th decade of feature films. This latest chapter in the adventures of the super-suave spy will be directed by Sam Mendes, who is best known for fantastic films like American Beauty, Road to Perdition, and Revolutionary Road. Mendes has always been more of an awards-worthy film maker to date, and it looks like he’s ready to finally have a little fun with this new project.

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: Yes, we know it’s been a few months since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks; we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be a month or so into the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

We must once again declare that this list is also simply opinion. You are are without doubt going to find movies here that you hate and do not think deserve to be included. You will surely think of movies that you think should not only be on here, but that should be at the very top of the list. There will even be some that I have not seen and thus, can not add. Even at this very moment, I sit, worrying and wondering if I’ve forgotten any that I would include; that’s just the way things fly when compiling something this massive.

With all of that said, we invite you in to relax and check out Chapter I of our list, The Decade List: The 59 Best Films of the Past Ten Years!

Slumdog Millionaire
Blu-ray Edition
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Rajendranath Zutshi
Fox Home Entertainment
Release date: March 31, 2009

Life and times are tough right now, well, at least for some. Director Danny Boyle realizes this and appoints himself commander in chief as he ventures out to satisfy and revitalize the crippled and worn hearts of America. Recent years past have seen the likes of violent films with no redeeming qualities and they were received with awards (The Departed and No Country for Old Men). Kudos to the Academy for singling out this crowd-pleaser that was head-and-shoulders above the frail and weightless competition, the eight academy awards it walked away with, including Best Picture, are rightfully earned.

Though the film takes place in both old India and new, Bombay and Mumbai, there’s no questioning Boyle’s film is something of an international phenomenon. Not complacent with fixing the hearts of Americans, he creates a film that wants to embrace the entire world. When a film finds itself with a beating heart, like Slumdog Millionaire does, there isn’t any questioning involving its emotional magnificence.

Surviving what the slums of India heaves, hatred, poverty, and desperation, is human hope, doing its best to prevail against forces that don’t want individuals to succeed.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, tonight was the big night — the 81st Academy Awards ceremony and below we have the full list of winners for you.

This was notable because it seemed a large effort was being put forward to change things up a bit and make the show a lot more entertaining in an attempt to bring in more viewers. They went off the track and hired Hugh Jackman to host the show instead of the normal comedian, they shook things up by using different methods of presenters, such as five previous winners instead of just last year’s winner. They tried a new thing called the “yearbook” where various clips from various genres from the year were shown; this was a chance to show movies like Hancock, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Death Race to try and appeal to younger crowds. They even changed up the In Memoriam section, having Queen Latifah sing live while our dearly departed were shown one last time on screens in the background.

Now I’m not sure if it’s just me, or what the overall consensus will be, but personally, I thought it was a massive failure. The show was severely boring and hard to watch at times. After promises of Hugh Jackman not doing “Hugh Jackman” things like singing and dancing, he surely did plenty of singing and dancing, including a real high point where it turned into a duet with Beyonce, which turned into a double duet with Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical, and then a duet menage a trois with who I think were Mamma Mia people. Really, just… hard to watch. I in fact muted it.

The spotlight MP3 deal of the week at Amazon is the classic Sex Pistols album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols for only $1.99! This would definitely top my list of perfect albums ever made. If you don’t already own this album, seriously, YOU MUST GET THIS. C’mon, you get 12 awesome songs for under two bucks, that’s insane! If you think you don’t know the Sex Pistols, you’re probably wrong. “God Save The Queen,” ever heard of it? No? THEN BUY THIS ALBUM FOR $1.99! Seriously, not one bad song. I own this album in every format already, but for this price, I swear I’d buy it again.

Here’s some other notable MP3 albums available now for $5 and under:

— Alice Cooper Goes To Hell ($4.97): Hailed as “one of the best albums ever made” by Dave3 of Geeks of Doom. Long before Jason went below, shock rocker Alice Cooper made the journey underworld with this classic 1976 sequel to the far more recognized Welcome To My Nightmare.

— Buffy the Vampire Slayer Once More With Feeling ($5): I’m sure very fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series already owns this soundtrack to the infamous musical episode (#107), but for those of you still working your way through that tremendous Complete Series DVD boxset, trust me when you hit this episode in Season 6, you’re gonna want this album – so snag it now for only five bucks.

— Slumdog Millionaire Music From The Motion Picture ($5): This indie darling could just be the next Oscar-winning film come February and its soundtrack has been getting tons of praise as well. The entire album is up for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, while two of its songs were nominated for Best Original Song.

— Dokken Alone Again & Other Hits ($4.97): If you dig hair metal contenders Dokken back in the 1980s, then this is a great deal on their greatest hits. For under five bucks, you get some great tunes like “Alone Again,” “In My Dreams,” and “Breaking The Chains,” but more importantly, it comes with “Dream Warriors,” the title track from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors! [“… don’t wanna dream no more!”]. Yes, yes, yes, a must-have, for sure.

Well, the Golden Globes were back after taking a year off because of the WGA strike, and they didn’t disappoint. Most people know the Globes aren’t that important and that the Hollywood Foreign Press doesn’t always vote for skill over bang, but they did a decent job tonight.

Instead of going through and listing off everything that won, here’s the movie categories, some of which may or may not have some Oscar implications in the near future.

In music: Best Song went to Bruce Springsteen for his song The Wrestler from Darren Aranofsky‘s The Wrestler. It was great to see Springsteen take home the award and even more amusing to hear his line “This is probably the only time I’ll be up against Clint Eastwood for something. And to be honest, I kinda like it!” Also in music, Slumdog Millionaire continued its torrent awards season pace and began its Golden Globes evening with a win for Best Score by A.R. Rahman.

Best Screenplay was another strike for Slumdog Millionaire, with Simon Beaufoy beating out the rest of the pack to take home the prize.

Slumdog Millionaire
Directed by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan
Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Irrfan Khan
Rated R
Release Date: November 12, 2008 (limited)

Poor Indian teenager Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is just one question away from winning the grand prize on India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. On the eve of show’s taping, a police inspector takes Jamal in on suspicion of cheating. Through a series of flashbacks, the inspector and moviegoers are treated to Jamal’s life story, from growing up in the slums of Mumbai, India, with his brother Salim to meeting and then losing his soulmate Latika (Freida Pinto). As his story unfolds, moviegoers find out why an uneducated 18-year-old with no interest in becoming rich ends up on Millionaire and just how does he know the answers for all those questions.

Written by Simon Beaufroy (The Full Monty) and based on the book Q and A by Vikas Swarup, Slumdog Millionaire is a prime example of a movie with just about everything going for it. A love story with an Oliver Twist sensibility, the movie is sweet and sentimental and not afraid to show it. Even cheesy lines cannot hold this flick down. When asked by his soulmate Latika what they would live on if they would run away, Jamal responds with confidence “Love.” Yes, it is terribly naive (or perhaps we are too jaded?) for anyone to believe such a thing but Jamal makes you believe it. When he delivers the line, it is not the fact that you believe what he says that makes root for him, but the fact that he believes it so strongly that you can’t help but root for him.