• Jamey Duvall catches up with Jeremy Renner and “Food, Inc.” director Robert Kenner. [Movie Geeks United!]
• Louie Psihoyos asks what you would do with 45 seconds in the global spotlight. [Huffington Post]
• Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz on four underdogs they love. [Entertainment Weekly]
The 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)
• Steve Pond talks to Ludovic Houplain, director of animated short nominee “Logorama,” which is looking more and more likely to pull an upset over Nick Park and Aardman. [The Odds]
• The 15 best Oscarcast moments. [Entertainment Weekly]
• Melena Ryzik reports from the New York celebration of “Food Inc.” [The Carpetbagger]
• David Poland sits down with Mark Boal and, separately, Paul Ottosson and Ray Beckett to talk “The Hurt Locker.” [The Hot Blog]
• Saoirse Ronan talks “The Lovely Bones” across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]
• Chris Jones profiles Roger Ebert, the man and his thumbs. [Esquire]
• John Lopez digs into the preferential voting system in intense depth. Maybe nothing you haven’t already read. And I’m kind of over it. [Little Gold Men]
• Charlie Wilson — yes, that one — has left us to our own wars. [Variety]
• Penelope Cruz says “thanks, no thanks” to Lars Von Trier, opts for “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” That’s how you follow up two Oscar nods in a row, I tell ya. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Anne Thompson sits down with “Food, Inc.” director Robert Kenner. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Scott Foundas talks “Public Enemies” with Michael Mann six months post-release. [LA Weekly]
• Peter DeBrudge on how Cecil B. DeMille Award recipient Martin Scorsese’s career has been shaped by early relationships. [Variety]
Much like last week’s announcement in their top category, most of the usual suspects are present in the Guild’s documentary lineup.
I’m particularly pleased to see French New Wave veteran Agnès Varda continue to rack up a healthy precursor tally; at this rate, she’s on course for her first Oscar nomination. (She’d be breaking an Oscar age record in the process, too.)
Of course, the DGA and the Academy don’t enjoy nearly same hand-in-hand relationship in Best Documentary as they do in Best Picture. Not since 1991 have the two agreed on a winner (Barbara Kopple’s “American Dream”), and even then, it was in separate years.
Meanwhile, a measly three of the last 17 DGA doc winners were also Oscar nominees. (It’s not much better in reverse: only seven of the last 18 Oscar winners also scored DGA nods.)
For me, “District 9” is the biggest and most pleasant surprise for me in this morning’s American Cinema Editors announcement. If ever the film looked like a lock for a Best Picture nomination, now is that time, I have to say. Getting in over presumed Oscar frontrunners “Precious” and, most especially, “Inglourious Basterds,” that’s a pretty big feather in its cap if you ask me.
“Star Trek” also makes another fairly strong case this morning for getting into the Academy’s 10 over something like “Invictus,” which keeps missing with guild after guild and should, perhaps, finally be called a spade. The drama field is then rounded out by what has become the rather definitive frontrunner trilogy of films.
In the comedy field, we get veterans in Joe Hutshing and Richard Marks perhaps predictably recognized for “Its Complicated” and “Julie & Julia” respectively, while the Coen brothers get their third nomination from the guild to date. The other two: Best Picture nominees “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men.” Round it out with two comedies that are tricking people into thinking they’ll be Best Picture nominees (with no mention of the dead and dying “Nine”) and voila, the ACE Eddie nominees.
Check out the full list after the jump.
I’ve often been asked throughout the latter part of 2009 why I should have the gall to consider it the best year of film product in a decade. It’s such a subjective circumstance that, of course, the only answer is, “I liked a lot of movies.” That’s not enough for most. Hard and fast evidence is necessary. A carefully outlined, persuasive argument is expected.
I just liked a lot of movies.
The year began slowly, as they tend to do. The first film I saw that cried for end-of-the-year remembrance was a modest baseball drama I caught at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in February. Then it was all the way into the summer before a blockbuster banged the first four-star gong, followed shortly by a happenstance viewing of an unconventional British biopic at the Los Angeles Film Festival and a catch-up viewing of one of the year’s Sundance hits.
Sprinkled throughout was top-tier animated product, a Comic-Con screening of one of the best sci-fi outings in years (and a homefront viewing of another first-time filmmaker’s fascinating foray into the genre), not to mention finally catching up with one of two exemplary war dramas that debuted in Toronto last fall.
Before long, the summer, with all its surprise delights, both substantial and appropriately frothy, began to wind down. The fall awards season picked up steam as Telluride fired the starting gun and, after that, it seemed every trip to a darkened theater brought some form of satisfaction. Even the entertainments seemed to satisfy completely.
How can one defend the position any more succinctly? I liked. A lot. Of movies. And I relish the opportunity now to pay tribute to the year’s best, some 30 titles, each of which could have been a top 10 finalist in any other year.
The winners, more after the jump:
Best Picture
“Up in the Air”
Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
Best Actor
George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
Best Actress
Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”
Best Supporting Actor
Christopher Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
Best Supporting Actress
Mo’Nique, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
We 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).
Um, okay. So the list of nominations for the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association were announced this morning. The group’s official website notes that the winners will be announced tomorrow (so…why bother with day-before nominees?). And now The Wrap is reporting (sans attribution — so I guess via press release) that the winners are as follows:
Best Film
“Up in the Air”
Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
Best Actor
George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
Best Actress
Carey Mulligan, “An Education”
(more after the jump)
I had a Q&A to moderate this evening, so forgive the lateness here (though these and the Indie Spirits, for my money, stopped being about true independent cinema long ago, so there was really no haste to begin with).
Anyway, predictably, “The Hurt Locker” came out on top at tonight’s Gotham Awards. The film won Best Feature and Best Ensemble, though lead actor Jeremy Renner was upset in the breakthrough actor race by Catalina Saavedra in “The Maid.” I’ve got that screener around here somewhere.
Tomorrow the Indie Spirits announce their nominees, which, by the way, will not include “The Hurt Locker” because the film wasn’t eligible this year. It was last year, when it received nods for Best Actor (Renner) and Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Mackie). Looking for a leg up tomorrow are “Precious” and “Crazy Heart,” I’d say, though we can expect some surprises too, I guess (I hope).
Full list of Gotham Winners after the jump.
Perhaps inevitably, the bulk of online chatter about the Best Documentary Feature shortlist unveiled yesterday focused less on the films that made it, and more on those that didn’t.
It’s par for the course for the Academy’s documentary branch to ignore a major title or two, but even by their severe standards, the list of high-profile snubs was a long one: “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” “Tyson,” “The September Issue,” “We Live in Public,” “It Might Get Loud,” “Rough Aunties” and so on.
But for every blogger or commenter complaining about the dubiousness of the list, I can’t fight the urge to ask whether or not they’ve seen all 15 titles that have been included. In these cases, it’s always easier to say what should have got in than what should have been left out.
You can check out the full press release here. The list of 15 competing titles as follows:
• “The Beaches of Agnes,” Agnès Varda, director (Cine-Tamaris)
• “Burma VJ,” Anders Østergaard, director (Magic Hour Films)
• “The Cove,” Louie Psihoyos, director (Oceanic Preservation Society)
• “Every Little Step,” James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, directors (Endgame Entertainment)
• “Facing Ali,” Pete McCormack, director (Network Films Inc.)
• “Food, Inc.,” Robert Kenner, director (Robert Kenner Films)
• “Garbage Dreams,” Mai Iskander, director (Iskander Films, Inc.)
• “Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders,” Mark N. Hopkins, director (Red Floor Pictures LLC)
• “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, directors (Kovno Communications)
• “Mugabe and the White African,” Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey, directors (Arturi Films Limited)
• “Sergio,” Greg Barker, director (Passion Pictures and Silverbridge Productions)
• “Soundtrack for a Revolution,” Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, directors (Freedom Song Productions)
• “Under Our Skin,” Andy Abrahams Wilson, director (Open Eye Pictures)
• “Valentino The Last Emperor,” Matt Tyrnauer, director (Acolyte Films)
• “Which Way Home,” Rebecca Cammisa, director (Mr. Mudd)
• Jeffrey Wells grills New York waitresses on their knowledge of the mere existence of “The Hurt Locker.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Oscar hopefuls “Anivl! The Story of Anvil” and “Food, Inc.” among IDA Award nominees. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Tim Gray gets quotes making a case against The 10. [Variety]
At this point, my advocacy for the documentary “The Cove” knows no bounds. So you’ll have to forgive the seemingly unprofessional manner with which I trumpet its artistic and activist success in this space. Now in limited release, the film has apparently failed to find an audience while other socially-conscious films like “Food, Inc.” have found their stride.
This is an important issue worth bringing to the pages of the LA Times, but I have to say, the by now tiresome argument that audiences’ interest in popular entertainment is such a drag on society is not the way to go. John Horn snidely remarks in this article that “audiences would rather hug Transformers than trees,” but even with a personal interest in “The Cove” and an understanding that audience disinterest in these films is a problem, I’m getting really tired of journalists taking the easy way out and tossing nuance out the window in this manner.
Regardless, there is a moment in the piece that strikes at, I think, the heart of what could keep audiences away from the film: the perception that “The Cove” is a wall-to-wall dolphin slaughter. I can’t say it loudly or enough: the footage of dolphins being killed in this film is brief, comes at the end, isn’t as brutal as you might expect and is served perfectly by the structure of the film. Please, if you have an interest in this material, don’t be one of those people who shies away because you don’t want to be upset by what you see.