I used to be obsessed with the Oscars. Not a year would go by when I wouldn’t make an effort to see (almost) every film nominated for the major awards. But this year? I have yet to see any of these movies, and few people, relatively speaking, actually have. If you’re like me, you’re skipping this year’s ceremony out of boredom. But to be fair, let’s at least take a look to see what these films are about.

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” – Brad Pitt ages backward. By far the most successful of theses movies at the box office, it is also the most nominated. But it’s three hours long (which is actually shorter than the Oscars).

• “Frost/Nixon” – Ron Howard’s take on a retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.

• “Milk” – The story of California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, a San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone by San Francisco Supervisor Dan White.

• “The Reader” – Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Burk re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

• “Slumdog Millionaire”- The story of the life of an impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik, who becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?”, wins, and is then suspected of cheating.

Snoooooooze. However, what may be interesting in this broadcast… Heath Ledger, who died a year ago of an accidental drug overdose, is nominated for Best Supporting Actor as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

As for the chicks…Let’s pull for hottie Anne Hathawayin “Rachel Getting Married,” or Angelina Jolie in “Changeling.” Also nominated are Melissa Leo in “Frozen River,” Meryl Streep in “Doubt” and Kate Winslet in “The Reader.”

Now, let’s look back at the past 15 years when films we actually wanted to see were nominated (and sometimes won), and which films should have won had Gunaxin picked the winners.

• 1993 Schindler’s List* (Hard to argue about this one, but The Fugitivewould be Gunaxin’s pick had List come out any other year)

• 1994 The Shawshank Redemption (Lost to Forrest Gump)… Pulp Fiction was also nominated this year, but Shawshank holds up better than Fiction.

• 1995 Braveheart* (Before Mel Gibson went insane)

• 1996 Fargo (Lost to The English Patient)

• 1997 Good Will Hunting (Lost to Titanic)

• 1998 Saving Private Ryan (Lost to Shakespeare in Love)

• 1999 The Sixth Sense (Lost to American Beauty)

• 2000 Gladiator*

• 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Lost to A Beautiful Mind)

• 2002 Gangs of New York (Lost to Chicago)

• 2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*

• 2004 Million Dollar Baby* (Not Eastwood’s best, but it’s still Eastwood and best of ‘04)

• 2005 Munich (Lost to Crash)

• 2006 The Departed*

• 2007 No Country for Old Men*

*Won Best Picture