In Contention

Tag: Best Documentary Feature

  • Wenders on why ‘Pina’ needs 3D

    Since seeing the film in February, I’ve been something of a broken record saying that Wim Wenders’s marvellous performance film “Pina” — which has been drawing rave responses at Toronto, and was recently submitted as Germany’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar — single-handedly restates the case for 3D, a technology that any number of recent Hollywood blockbusters have tarnished somewhat.

    While even the most well-executed 3D narrative films have hardly depended on the gimmick for anything more than bonus effect, 3D actively enhances the audience’s understanding of the subject in “Pina,” where movement patterns and spatial deconstruction in the late Pina Bausch’s choreography are brought to the fore, replicating the immediacy and interactivity of live performance.

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  • A note on ‘Senna’ and the Oscars

    Longtime Oscar-watchers know that the Academy’s documentary branch is a law unto itself: no amount of glowing reviews, previous awards, robust box office and/or pop-culture prominence is enough to secure a film a guaranteed nomination in the Best Documentary Feature race. Indeed, anticipating the “surprise” snub in the branch’s series of shortlists is something of an annual pundits’ parlor game: last year, Davis Guggenheim’s popular “Waiting for Superman” was the winning/losing horse, depending on your perspective.

    Still, inasmuch as one can predict these things, Asif Kapadia’s marvelous “Senna,” which I reviewed earlier this week, ticks all the boxes of an Oscar frontrunner in the category.

    A rousing, emotionally rich biopic with a strong dramatic arc that makes it accessible even to those with no interest in motor sport — the latter audience representing its biggest obstacle in the States — it arrives on US screens today boasting sensational reviews (for the number obsessives, its Metacritic score currently sits 84), record-breaking UK box office and a Sundance audience award. When it comes to BAFTA night, at least, the other four documentary nominees may as well not bother turning up. (It’ll likely be a hot contender for the Best British Film prize too.)

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Senna” (****)

    It seems perverse to begin a review of a documentary — one about a well-known, latter-day sports legend, at that — with something as mundanely cautious as a spoiler alert. Until recently, if general knowledge hadn’t already acquainted a viewer with the outcome of a non-fiction feature, or if the laws of real, unheightened life hadn’t made it patently obvious, the filmmakers would usually do the job for us anyway, working backwards from set facts to find the variables we don’t know, or didn’t know we knew.

    With a new breed of documentarists getting ever more playfully shape-shifting in they ways they trade information and manipulate point of view — last year’s talking-point docs “Catfish” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop” both hinged on an abrupt turn not only in perspective, but in subject — Asif Kapadia’s dazzling biopic “Senna” instead subverts expectations by keeping its storytelling fiercely linear. Viewers unfamiliar with the story of Ayrton Senna, the reckless, beautiful Brazilian Formula 1 racing driver who rose to prominence in the 1980s and ended his career as arguably the greatest in the sport’s history, are offered no pat framing devices and wistful talking heads to say what became of him, beyond the unhappy use of the past tense.

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  • On the Academy’s other rule changes

    With the big news out of the way, there are a few other annual house-cleaning rule alterations that ought to be addressed.

    First up, the Best Animated Feature Film category — which seems to get a face-lift in the rule book every summer — will now have anywhere from three to five nominees. As it was, in a year with 16 qualifying titles, five nominees would be selected. Less than the magic number 16 would yield just three nominees. Now, if 13 to 15 films qualify, four of them will be nominated by the branch. Under that, I’m assuming it’s just three as always.

    VERDICT: I’m okay with this, I suppose, but the qualifying numbers still feel quite arbitrary. Still, this keep quality-heavy films that happen to be quantity-thin for animated output from being slighted.

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  • To the highest bidder

    As you know, Banksy has been all over town making his presence known in the lead-up to the Oscars.  All These Wonderful Things documentary know-it-all A.J. Schnack happened by one of the artist’s latest pieces 10 minutes before it was tagged and 20 minutes before the owner of the building started the inevitable removal procedure with an endgame that fully proves Banksy’s point in “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” Here’s a photo:

    (Check out Schnack’s recently posted analysis of the doc feature fields for both the Oscars and the Spirits here.)

    [Photo: A.J. Schnack]

  • The five categories giving me hell

    With a little over 48 hours until the big night, I find myself in an uncommon state of disarray — my crammed Oscar weekend “To Do” list includes viewing all 15 short nominees in order to make an informed dart-throw of a prediction (stickler that I am, I held out for a theatrical screening), preparing copious supplies of food and alcohol for my second annual hotel-suite Oscar party (sorry, the guest list is full) and somehow finding time to write a final predictions piece.

    Before I can check off that last task, however, I actually have to settle on some final predictions — and despite the presence of solid frontrunners in most key categories, this year is giving me more trouble than most. For a race that, only a couple of weeks ago, seemed smothered in blanket affection for a single film, other possibilities have opened up that unusually equalize the possibilities of both a titanic sweep and a widely splintered share-a-thon.

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  • Revisiting the veracity of ‘Gift Shop’

    With more pundits latching onto the possibility of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” taking an atypical (and for the Academy, potentially awkward) Oscar win on Sunday, the LA Times’s Jason Felch is raking one final comb through the question of the film’s authenticity.

    With Banksy, Thierry Guetta (aka the film’s subject, Mr. Brainwash) and Joachim Levy (a filmmaker and collaborator of Guetta’s threatening to sue Banksy for insufficiently crediting his contribution to the project) all vouching for the truth of the events depicted in the film, no concrete reason has yet surfaced not to take it at face value — but doubts persist, largely because of Banksy’s own established reputation as an artistic prankster.

    Some like to float the theory that Guetta is Banksy — one easily dashed by the former’s public records and the number of journalists who have, in confidence, interviewed the latter over the years.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Documentary (Feature)

    It has been noted what a solid year of documentary filmmaking 2010 was. It was well-reflected in the Academy’s initial narrowing of the feature field to 15 contenders and is certainly evident in the ultimate quintet of nominees, each of them informative and bold in their own ways.

    Still, it came as quite a shock to many that the perceived frontrunner of the year, Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman,” was left off the list. Theories run rampant, but at the end of the day, it seemed the branch just didn’t go for the film’s stretching of truths and hastily boiled-down rhetoric. Nevertheless, an opportunity may have been missed to shine a light on the issue of education reform, which is still a considerable one.

    The nominees are:

    “Exit through the Gift Shop” (Banksy and Jaimie D’Cruz)
    “Gasland” (Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic)
    “Inside Job” (Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs)
    “Restrepo” (Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)
    “Waste Land” (Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley)

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  • Someone’s campaigning for Banksy

    Following its semi-surprise Oscar nomination last week, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” has received a nifty publicity boost from this prominent Banksy-honoring mural (pictured right, and in more detail after the jump) that went up recently in Los Angeles. Although some were quick to assume it’s the work of the man himself, all signs point instead to Mr. Brainwash — the Banksy-mentored street artist who emerges as the hapless protagonist of the documentary.

    The resulting is-it-or-isn’t-it discussion neatly echoes the conversation around the film as a whole — and since Banksy can hardly work the campaign circuit himself, at least someone’s doing on behalf of the film.

    Meanwhile, the more I think about this particularly Oscar race, the more I think there’s something to Kris’s prediction that it’s the inevitably absent Banksy who will emerge victorious on February 27. This is, after all, a category on which voters are required to see all five nominees before checking off their ballots — a situation where the film’s eccentricity could work in its favor.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 50 — Special Edition! — Nod postmortem with Guy Lodge and Peter Knegt

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    Unless you’ve been under a rock this morning, you’re aware of the day’s big news. Oscar nominations were revealed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 24 categories. And, as is typically, there were enough eyebrow-raisers to give us a ton to talk about. We’ve got IC’s own Guy Lodge and indieWIRE‘s Peter Knegt on board. Also, it’s our 50th episode! Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Globes chatter, Batman buzz, foreign Oscar surprises

    • The Golden Globes did their thing, with Ricky Gervais’s antics drawing more attention than the sweep for “The Social Network.”

    • David Fincher’s film continued its dominance at the Broadcast Film Critics’ Association Awards, which Kris reported from first-hand.

    • As if to remind us that there’s more than one film in the race, this week’s BAFTA nominations were ruled by “The King’s Speech” and “Black Swan.”

    • Sadly, we bade farewell this week to regular columnist Chad, who left us with his idiosyncratic Best of 2010 list.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 49 — Final pre-nod discussion

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    We’re moving into the last weekend before the Academy’s big nominations reveal on Tuesday. Anne is calling from Sundance, where the festival is just gearing up, leaving me alone in LA to my devices. But there are a number of things to address in these final pre-nod hours, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Banksy joshes Guggenheim in Cinema Eye speech

    Yesterday I dug through the 15 documentary feature short-listers to offer an idea of how that race might turn out.  Over the weekend, the perceived heavy of the crowd, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” (which is the most awarded doc of the year), was taking down yet another prize at the Cinema Eye Honors.  Director Banksy was not on hand to deliver his speech, natch, but the film’s producer, Jaimie D’Cruz, read it to the crowd and Matt Singer was on the ready with a recorder.  Here’s the speech:

    Now’s not the time for long, rambling speeches. I’ll leave that for the director of ‘Waiting for Superman.’

    I’d like to thank the Cinema Eye awards. It’s great to be recognized by people who are so obsessed with the documentary genre — in other words people who are even more socially retarded than myself.

    I guess some of you may be getting a bit suspicious about me. How can you know that this award is real? But I’d like to categorically assure you that this evening’s awards are not being staged by actors for a parody I’m making about film awards.

    I’d like to thank anyone who worked on the movie. Almost all of them did a great job. And I’d like to dedicate this award to anyone out there who’s ever looked at the state of this world and thought: “I can’t just stand idly by and watch this happen. I need to get it on tape.” Thank you and have a good evening.

    [Photo: Producers Distribution Agency]

  • A look at Oscar’s 15 documentary feature hopefuls

    While Guy has been surveying the foreign field, I’ve been diving in elsewhere.

    It has been considered a banner year for documentary filmmaking. So naturally, the Best Documentary Feature race has been an interesting one to watch since the season’s early days.  Two months ago the Academy announced 15 finalists (whittling it down from 101 eligible titles) still alive in the race for this year’s doc Oscar. Branch members will now select five nominees from the remaining hopefuls, which will be announced as part of the Academy’s big reveal Tuesday.

    Even if there are a number of examples that didn’t make the list but probably should have, those 15 films largely make for a sound representation of a great year for the form. I spent the last couple of weeks revisiting some and saddling up to others for the first time, so it seemed worth it to offer up my thoughts on each and my perspective on the race.

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  • Updates to The Circuit

    A couple of things this morning. First, the Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association has come out of clear, blue (fabulous) sky to dish out their honors — and “I Am Love,” therefore, joins the minimal chorus of Best Picture critics award winners.

    Meanwhile, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” won the top prize at last night’s Cinema Eye Honors, but Lixin Fan’s “Last Train Home” took home the most trophies with three.

    Speaking of which, check back later today as I’ll have an in-depth look at the 15 docs shortlisted for Oscar.

  • DGA announces documentary nominees

    Two days after revealing their feature film nominees, the Directors’ Guild of America has named their five selections in the documentary category. It’s a list that mostly lends credence to the presumed Oscar frontrunners, with one notable exception: Chinese director Lixin Fan, whose lavishly acclaimed debut “Last Train Home” was left off the Academy’s 15-title documentary shortlist, to the dismay of many a critic.

    Fan isn’t the only first-timer to crack the DGA’s list: war journalist Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington made the cut for their gutsy foray into filmmaking, “Restrepo.” Notably, if not surprisingly, absent is “Exit Through the Gift Shop” director Banksy — the Guild was never likely to tap a celebrity outsider who won’t even identify himself, and I suspect the Academy will have similar reservations.

    Meanwhile, note the three overlaps between the PGA and DGA lists, “Client 9,” “Waiting for Superman” and “Inside Job,” with only the last-named film also scoring with the Writers’ Guild. Just in case you hadn’t spotted the one to beat. Check out the nominees at The Circuit.

    [Photo: National Geographic Entertainment]

  • ‘Waste Land’ wins IDA feature award

    Lucy Walker and company’s film beat out fellow AMPAS doc short-lister “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” The other winners at The Circuit.

  • 11/22 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Coen talks ‘Somewhere’ with Coppola, ‘Country Strong’ a drama, no love for Herzog

    • Joel Coen shows up at an east coast screening of “Somewhere” to conduct a Q&A with Sofia Coppola. [Inside Movies]

    • Tom O’Neill reports that the HFPA has classified “Country Strong” as a drama. [Gold Derby]

    • Our own Guy Lodge reacts to the recently released (and apparently unauthorized) “Winnie” trailer. [The Guardian]

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