In Contention

Tag: Best Documentary Feature

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 41 — Governors Awards, animated and doc feature shortlists, circuit festivities and remembering Ronni Chasen

    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.

    There have been toasts in honor of talent and in the way of remembrance during this busy, and heartbreaking, week on the Oscar circuit. So as always, there’s plenty to cover. Let’s dive in and see what’s on the docket today…

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  • 15 films shortlisted for documentary feature Oscar

    Cue the annual outcry over what titles didn’t make it — judging from the Twitter reaction, this year’s most-mourned snubee is the Chinese critical darling “Last Train Home.” (I’d join the pitchfork-wielders, but I haven’t had an opportunity to see the film yet.) More surprising, however, is the omission of such widely fancied contenders as “The Oath” and “A Film Unfinished” — yes, folks, hell is experiencing a cold snap and the Academy snubbed a Holocaust documentary.

    Beyond that, hoewever, most of the perceived frontrunners are present, including “Inside Job,” “Waiting for Superman,” “Restrepo,” “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer” and “Waste Land.” Joining them on the list, I’m happy to say, is “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” which I suspected would fall foul of the Academy’s usual resistance to crowdpleasing pop-culture docs. (The likes of “Catfish” and “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” took that bullet instead, unfortunately.)

    At this stage, I’m afraid I’ve seen only a third of the shortlist — from which Banksy’s shape-shifting, satirical art study is comfortably my favourite. (Come on, Academy: aren’t you a little curious to see who will show up if you nominate him?) “Inside Job,” however, plainly remains the film to beat. Full list after the cut.

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  • 11/5 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Boyle on ‘127 Hours’ faintings, best in animated villainy, lead actresses must suffer

    • Steve Pond gets Danny Boyle’s thoughts on this rash of faintings at screenings of “127 Hours.” [The Odds]

    • Sasha Stone calls 2010 (so far) one of the best years for film in recent history. [Awards Daily]

    • “Megamind” gets Josh Wigler thinking about the best animated villains of all time. [MTV Movies Blog]

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  • LONDON: ‘Tabloid,’ ‘Waste Land,’ ‘The Peddler’

    Amid a fairly robust non-fiction slate in this year’s London Film Festival programme, there appears to be an informal sidebar of documentaries about the process of, well, documenting — whether via media avenues of art, film or journalism.

    That’s not to say the films in question are particularly meta. The ones grouped here are all pretty straightforward studies of complicated (or even downright hinky) creative processes, none more so than “Smash His Camera” (***), Leon Gast’s slight but enjoyable snapshot of famed US paparazzo Ron Galella, which pokes gentle fun at its gnomish subject while pointedly mourning the gradual draining of artistry from the sport of celebrity shutterbugging.

    “Smash His Camera” has already been released in the States, so I won’t dwell too long on it here, other than to say it made me even more aware than intended of my status as a viewer – largely I couldn’t block out the running commentary from the seat behind me, a ceaseless Noo Joisey-accented stream of observations like, “Now she was the real deal,” and “Whatever happened to that guy?” Only my half-British reserve prevented me turning round and politely telling him to cram it, so I was glad of my restraint when the house lights came up to reveal that the offender was… Ron Galella himself. Now that was meta.

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  • 10/12 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Obama with the ‘Superman’ kids, handicapping the docs, ‘Debt’ delayed

    • President Obama met with children featured in the film “Waiting for Superman” yesterday. [Associated Press]

    • Handicapping this year’s documentary feature Oscar race. [Vulture]

    • Dave Karger explains his Gurus choices, calls “Love & Other Drugs” (one of his predicted Best Picture nominees) one of the sexiest films he’s seen in years. [Oscar Watch]

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  • ‘The Cove’ set for prime time debut

    I sometimes wonder what Louis Psihoyos might have been able to convey to a massive television audience if Fisher Stevens hadn’t bum-rushed the microphone when “The Cove” won Best Documentary, and/or Oscarcast producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic hadn’t decided to play Psihoyos off before he had a chance to speak up (all on account of a harmless banner Ric O’Barry unspooled and held on high).

    In any case, the film has been on DVD for some time now and has found a modest audience, but it’ll have its prime time television debut this Sunday, August 29.  Animal Planet will premiere the film at 9:00pm EST, so tell a friend.

    Meanwhile, as Guy reminded us yesterday and Anne and I discussed this morning, the documentary feature category is looking like a race for the ages this year.  What do you think will be left standing when the awards dust clears at the Kodak in February?

    [Photo: ScienceNewsBlog]

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 29 — Summer’s best bets, fall festival preview, stiff documentary competition

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, a 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 on route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    There’s a lot on the plate today as we dive headlong into the madness one more time.  Summer is giving way to fall (though a check of the weather wouldn’t make you guess as much), and with it, the first major stage of the long haul: festival season.  Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Deadline for Oscar docs looming

    As we enter the fall festival season with an Oscar prediction sheet still covered in question marks, there is at least one category where almost all the viable contenders have already been seen. I speak, of course, of Best Documentary Feature, a race already crowded with possibilities from earlier fests and the summer release calendar, and with a submission deadline less than a week away.

    Over at The Odds, Steve Pond informs us that filmmakers have until September 1 to enter their docs for Oscar consideration, having completed qualifying theatrical runs (one week minimum) in the past 12 months. Sifting through the titles in play, Pond likes the chances of such heavily-buzzed titles as “Restrepo,” “Inside Job” and “A Film Unfinished.”

    All three films take on weighty subjects — respectively, the conflict in Afghanistan, the global economic crisis and (a well-known pet theme of the Academy) the Holocaust — which should stand them in good stead with a voting branch not renowned for its sense of humor.

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  • ‘Inside Job’ trailer

    I reviewed Charles Ferguson’s smart financial recession study at Cannes in May, describing it as “a thorough, incisive if faintly dry breakdown of the current economic crisis that plays a little like last year’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” on a heavy dose of Ritalin.” Most other critics are less measured in their praise; though there are no sure things with the Academy’s wilful documentary branch, the film looks a cinch to score an Oscar nod, and very possibly the win too. The Sony Pictures Classics acquisition will play Toronto next month, before hitting US theaters on October 8. Apple has the first trailer; click on the image to check it out there, or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Restrepo’ co-director Sebastian Junger

    It may have a hard time distracting audiences from shinier baubles on the summer-movie tree, but there are few films currently in theaters more invigorating and essential than “Restrepo.”

    An unprecedentedly first-hand war documentary, shot on the fly by a pair of filmmakers embedded in a U.S. Army unit stationed in Afghanistan’s perilous Korengal Valley, it emphatically earns the previously overused adjective “immersive”: as Taliban bullets rattle past the camera lens, the terror and confusion of combat hits harder than it has – or could – in any narrative war film.

    The film, which expands its release considerably today, leads an already impressive charge of American non-fiction cinema in 2010; it won the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and we can expect an outcry if due respect isn’t paid by the Academy’s documentary branch.

    The achievement is all the more impressive for being the debut film of Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, not that either name is an unfamiliar one. Hetherington is an acclaimed British photographer who won the coveted World Press Photo Award in 2007: interestingly, for an image from the same assignment that bore this film. Junger, meanwhile, is something of a superstar journalist, an adventurer best-known for his 1991 book “The Perfect Storm.” That work may have been Hollywood-ized in 2000, but Junger’s own big-screen ambitions were rather more casual.

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  • More halfway-mark blues

    A few weeks ago, I commented upon the scarcity of viable awards contenders released in the last six months, coming to the unsurprising conclusion that there hasn’t been much to, well, comment upon. In the past few days, however, Variety’s Tim Gray and EW’s Dave Karger have revisited the subject … and haven’t come up with very much either.

    A common emerging sentiment is that, with such a meagre first-half slate, filling 10 slots on a Best Picture ballot could be a challenge for many voters – and could ultimately result in a decidedly weak nominee field, one with more “Blind Sides” than “District 9s.”

    Sasha Stone has challenged this by suggesting that, in what she (if not everyone else) believes will be “a great year for film,” the Academy may end up looking to arthouse or non-summer genre fare to fill the gaps – though, to take two of her listed alternatives, it has to be said that while most critics would be down with “Winter’s Bone” making the list, “Shutter Island” would be a much more contentious nominee.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Documentary Feature

    Daniel Ellsberg in The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon PapersThe year’s documentary feature category hasn’t offered up a lot of suspense so far this season. One contender has been a dominant force on the circuit and the nominations, for the most part, lined up accordingly. A lot of the intrigue, of course, is taken out by the mid-season announcement of a 15-film shortlist, which sometimes has its own shockers (as it did this year).

    Voters in this field have to attend screenings of all the nominees, so that can sometimes yield left-field choices that don’t adhere to herd mentality. Then again, there are times when one film is too difficult to ignore. We had a year like that last year and it looks like things are heading that way this year as well.

    The nominees are:

    “Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country” (Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller)
    “The Cove” (Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens)
    “Food, Inc.” (Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein)
    “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” (Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith)
    “Which Way Home” (Rebecca Cammisa)

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Valentino: The Last Emperor’ director Matt Tyrnauer

    Matt TyrnauerFor 17 years, Matt Tyrnauer worked for Vanity Fair writing up profiles of major artists and pop culture figures such as architect Frank Gehry, producer Robert Evans, writer Bret Easton Ellis, actor Greg Kinnear, designer Tommy Hilfiger, Martha Stewart (her post-prison cover story) and legendary designer Valentino Garavani.

    That final name has made an impact on his life that will alter the course of his career as an artist, and may just land him an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary.

    Having studied film in college, a life in the cinema was never out of the realm of possibility for Tyrnauer, though his work at Vanity Fair consumed a great deal of his life through the last two decades. When he decided to make a film about Garavani, he did so with an abandon that suggests a fierce passion for his subject and deep belief in what he was doing as an artist.  “Valentino: The Last Emperor” was the result.

    The director admits there were times he did not know what he was doing, in particular when it came to distribution, but that flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants sensation seems to have served this likable young man very well. Confidence in his film, that it was a truthful representation of the inner world of Garavani, would also help him when his subject disliked the film upon first viewing. Garavani ultimately needed the reassurance of a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival to convince him otherwise.

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  • Oh yeah, the IDA Awards…

    Anvil! The Story of AnvilWe neglected to mention the International Documentary Association Awards happened on Friday night, but happen they did.

    Often an independent-minded group of on the precursor circuit, the IDA underlined the point this year by crowning a prominently Oscar-snubbed title as the year’s best.

    The many fans of rock doc “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” will have been pleased to see it take Best Documentary Feature, beating Oscar contenders “Food, Inc.” and “Mugabe and the White African” in the process. That should be some consolation to the film, after failing to make the Academy’s documentary shortlist last month.

    “Anvil!” also nabbed an award for Best Music Documentary (trumping “Soundtrack for a Revolution,” another film that made the Academy’s cut).

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  • 11/23 Oscarweb Round-up

    Bill Murray on the set of Fantastic Mr. Fox• Dave Karger cusses with “Fantastic Mr. Fox” star Bill Murray. [Oscar Watch]

    • Owen Gleiberman whines about the snubbing of inferior documentaries, fails to recognize the solid slate of short-listed films we ended up with. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Nicolas Rapold talks to the principals of “The Last Station.” [New York Times]

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Doc shortlist, honorary Oscars and more

    Lauren Bacall at the 2009 Governors' Awards• The shortlist of contenders for the documentary Oscar was announced, surprising many — we dug into it a little.

    • The season’s first Oscars were handed out, as Lauren Bacall, Gordon Willis, Roger Corman and John Calley were celebrated at the Governors’ Awards.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column broke down the wide-open Best Original Screenplay race.

    • The Long Shot lived up to its name, spotlighting a few of the season’s most deserving outsiders.

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  • Define “extortion”

    A few hours ago, we mentioned James Toback’s allegations of “extortion” within the Academy’s doc branch being responsible for the failure of his film “Tyson” to make the Oscar shortlist. I wrote that the lack of detail provided made it difficult to know how seriously to take him.

    As it turns out, the answer is: not very. Steve Pond has done a little digging, and come up with the following:

    [The] Academy’s executive director, Bruce Davis, tells theWrap that Toback’s “concern was that one of the documentarians voting to pick the shortlist bore him a grudge and should have recused himself/herself from the balloting.”

    The accounting firm, he says,” quoting PwC’s report, “has assured us that ‘no single voter was responsible for [“Tyson”’s] failure to make the shortlist….’”

    Thus ends the very brief conspiracy theory. Sour grapes, anyone?

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 11 — Doc feature short list, ‘That Evening Sun,’ Governors Awards and ‘Basterds’ on the march

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk, your weekly kudocast featuring yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood.

    On the docket today:

    • Anne and I discuss the week’s big Oscar news, the revelation of 15 short list contenders for the Best Documentary Feature category, including discussion of snubs, talk on those we’ve seen and some fleeting expectations on how things could shake out.

    • With “That Evening Sun” making its way to limited release, we briefly touch on the film and Hal Holbrook’s wonderful leading performance.

    • The Governors Awards took place over the weekend, and Anne was in attendance.  She gives us some inside perspective on the festivities.

    • Quentin Tarantino is back on the awards circuit with “Inglourious Basterds” facing an imminent DVD release.  We talk again about the film’s Oscar chances and the potential for another populist film, “Star Trek,” duking it out with the war romp for a spot in the 10.

    Have a listen to this week’s podcast below, with Lauren Bacall’s Honorary Oscar acceptance speech leading the way.  As always, you can subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

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