Oscar preview

I'm hard at work trying to see as many Oscar-nominated films as I can before the ceremony and the 10th Annual Van De Voorde Oscar Smackdown. For the record, I won Sunday's Grammy Challenge with an astounding 16 correct picks out of 28 ("a D+, that's not a grade they like to give out, I'll tell you that").
Anyway, last night we watched our second film nominated in the documentary feature category, "Man on Wire."
It's kind of a documentary thriller about French highwire walker Philippe Petit's 1974 stunt between the towers of the World Trade Center. It includes interviews with Petit and his gang of accomplices who plotted the project as if it were a bank robbery. It was illegal, afterall.
Being French, they took great photographs and home movies of their training, which included lots of frollicking in fields while wearing yellow jumpsuits (a la Owen Wilson and the Lawn Wranglers) and red trousers. These films and photos are mixed with really nice, not "Unsolved Mysteries" style dramatizations of their work inside the towers. And for a guy who can't stand to walk over sidewalk grates, some of the pictures were hard to watch.
Seven years after the towers fell, it's strange to see the footage of the WTC being constructed, but the film never mentions they're no longer there.
I recommend it, but I'm not sure I'm ready to make it my pick.