All these wonderful things

The Pre-Christmas Brief: THE COVE Leads the Laurels, LA DANSE Breaks Into the Top 20 and the Docs of Hopenhagen

We are winding down for the year and our posting over the next two weeks will be intermittent at best.  But we'll be back in the New Year with our look back on 2009, including our favorite films, nonfiction heroes and the issues that defined our community.

During the holidays, we will be twittering the important (and occasionally trivial) doc news (there will also be utterly incomprehensible nonsense), so if you aren't following us yet, now's as good a time to start as any.

But before we go...

Film critics are continuing to pile on the end-of-the-year honors, most recently with the Chicago Film Critics being the latest group to throw their hats in the ring for ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, the St. Louis Film Critics going for CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY and the Florida Film Critics lining up for THE COVE.  Spreading the love a little bit further, those rapscallions at the Satellite Awards awarded their Best Documentary prize to EVERY LITTLE STEP.

We're keeping track of all of this year's major honors - from festival jury prizes to critics awards - on our 2009 Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll.  At the moment, THE COVE is way out in front with the most laurels, with substantial support from film critics groups proving the difference.  ANVIL, BURMA VJ and FOOD, INC. also have a strong showing.

Further signs that the year is almost done - the docs have nearly cleared out of the art houses as Oscar bait comes to town.  According to Box Office Mojo, the only feature documentary to make more than $3,000 total in North American theaters this weekend was Frederick Wiseman's LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET.  That film took in $27,500 on 25 screens this weekend for a total box office take to date of $342K.  That's enough to edge LA DANSE into the Top 20 Nonfiction Box Office for 2009, replacing UNMISTAKEN CHILD (which quietly doubled the take of FLOW to become the highest grossing doc yet for Oscilloscope Laboratories).

An interesting piece of box office trivia - THE COVE looks to end its theatrical run with a box office take of approximately $850K - nearly the exact same box office total for 2007's SHARKWATER.

The Monday Brief: Critics Love Them Some COVE, Grant Deadlines & Oprah Takes the Doc Plunge

Good afternoon and apologies for a slightly late (and abbreviated) Monday brief - a combo of internet failures and trying to stay on top of the Top 25 Film Festival list (as well as my real job(s)).

As the midday sun hits Los Angeles, the orgy of film critics prizes is in full effect and it's pretty clear that the early favorite for crix nods will be Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE.  Just this weekend, it picked up prizes from the Los Angeles Film Critics (which split the award between COVE and Agnes Varda's THE BEACHES OF AGNES), the Boston Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Online and even the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (which also gave two awards to Varda - the Lifetime Achievement and Perseverance Award).  11 days ago, THE COVE picked up the Best Documentary laurel from the National Board of Review.

Only today did some critics groups start to break away from THE COVE, as the New York Film Critics gave their doc prize to OF TIME AND THE CITY and the Southeast Film Critics awarded FOOD, INC. (which previously picked up the DC Film Critics award), with THE COVE as runner-up.

This is setting up and interesting dynamic heading forward, with THE COVE seemingly the critics choice and FOOD, INC. sweeping the major pre-Oscar documentary awards (winning at the Gothams, nominated for the IDA, the Spirits and Cinema Eye), where THE COVE was mostly shut out (it leads Cinema Eye nominations with 7 but was bypassed by the other awards).

Also today, the Broadcast Film Critics named their 5 nominees.  In addition to front-running COVE and FOOD, they nommed ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY and MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT.

And at the European Film Academy's Awards on Saturday, Peter Liechti's THE SOUND OF INSECTS: RECORD OF A MUMMY received the Documentary Prix Arte.  The film is up for Cinema Eye's new Spotlight Award.

The Monday Brief: Sundance! Spirits! IDA! Gothams! Is This the Biggest Week of the Year?

The Monday Brief is back and just in time - as a month full of European mega-fests comes to a close (and VIDEOCRACY takes Sheffield, TRASH HUMPERS shocks Copenhagen and LAST TRAIN HOME conquers Amsterdam) and what may just be the biggest week of the year...

The Gothams kick off the award season in New York tonight as high profile docs FOOD, INC., GOOD HAIR and TYSON take on underdogs MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER and PARADISE.  In addition to those, festival favorite OCTOBER COUNTRY is up as the sole nonfiction title in the Films Not Yet Playing at a Theater Near You category. 

Here's a piece of trivia - in the five years that the Gothams have awarded a Best Documentary prize, the winning film has never gone on to win the Oscar, which is pretty good news if you're betting on THE COVE in March.

For the first time, the Gothams will be streaming live here, starting at 8 PM eastern tonight.

Then early tomorrow - probably before some Gotham revelers have gone to bed - Film Independent will announced nominations for its Spirit Awards.  Worth watching - will FOOD, INC. sweep the major doc award nominations prior to the Oscars?  Will the Spirits act (consciously or no) as a corrective on some of Oscar's snubs (I'm looking at you ANVIL, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC and SEPTEMBER ISSUE)? 

Also worth watching are the nominations in the Truer Than Fiction category, which recognize films and filmmakers who have not yet received the attention they deserve.

Then, on Wednesday, the dam will fully break as the Sundance Film Festival announces its competition films for 2010.  Here's what we know already - after what many agreed was a lackluster 2009 festival, next year's Sundance is shaping up (on paper at least) to be a barn-burner for docs.  At least three films from Oscar nominated filmmakers are on tap, along with 2 new films from folks who took Sundance by storm with their previous features, plus a veteran Sundance filmmaker is back as producer on a debut feature.

And that's not even including LAST TRAIN HOME, the IDFA-champ that everyone and their mother expects to show in Park City (along with 2 or 3 or more titles from the just-wrapped European doc circuit).

By the way, if you haven't checked it out yet, gander at the newly re-designed Sundance fest website, which leads off with a retro graphic manifesto:

"REBEL.  This is the renewed rebellion.  This is the re-charged fight against the establishment of the expected.  This is the rebirth of the battle for brave new ideas.  This is Sundance, reminded.  And this is your call to join us."

That's a whole lot of "re" words. 

And what does it say, exactly, that John Cooper's first year at the helm begins with the declaration that Sundance needed a rebirth and a re-charge?  (Although, again, after last year, you won't get much argument from these's parts.)  Slogans aside, the week's first peak at this year's line-up will give our first clues as to whether there's a true revolution (a "re" word they didn't use) afoot.

The Monday Brief: THIS IS IT and MRS. GOLDBERG Make 2009 Biggest Doc Year Ever

Greetings from London...where we await tomorrow night's Grierson Awards, Wednesday's kickoff of Sheffield Doc/Fest 2009 and Thursday's announcement of this year's Cinema Eye Honors Nominations...

The big doc news worldwide this weekend has been the massive success of MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT.  The behind the scenes look at what was to be Jackson's big comeback tour launched last Wednesday with nearly $7.5M in ticket sales - the seventh best one day take for a nonfiction feature all time (only FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and both JACKASS films had higher grosses).  Friday, the studio estimates that the film made $7.85M, which would be the sixth best day ever.

Further, THIS IS IT became the fourth nonfiction to lead the theatrical box office for the weekend.  Estimates say the film took in more than $21M this weekend (which brings its total cume to $32.5M.  International figures already put the film over $100M in its initial bow.

Strangely, bizarrely, breathtakingly, there has been a campaign by some to declare the film's box office take a huge disappointment.  Nikke Finke seemed to get there first, quoting unnamed studio rivals declaring that Sony had overestimated the film's potential.  (Sony had reportedly paid $50M for the rights.)

David Poland knocks down that nonsense - and hard:

"Anyone still pushing the idea of THIS IS IT as a disappointment should be publicly ridiculed. Aggressively...

And let's not pretend it's innocent. "Projections by the studio were not met" is reporting a fact. "Disappointment" is claiming an emotion that reflects the intent to slap back at the feeling of having been set up for more. Plus, reporting what other studios are saying as though they are impartial observers is another remarkable break in trust with readers."

Look for THIS IS IT to become the highest grossing nonfiction title of the year sometime Tuesday.

Elsewhere in the theatrical box office (and decidedly a more quiet success), Aviva Kempner's YOO-HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG passed the $1M theatrical box office mark.  She previously scored at the box office with her 1999 documentary THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANK GREENBERG.

With that, GOLDBERG becomes the 12th nonfiction feature in 2009 to make more than $1M - and that sets a new record for nonfiction features.  Previously, the breakthrough year of 2004 led with 11 films passing the $1M threshold.  

(The others, in case you're keeping score at home, are EARTH, THIS IS IT, JONAS BROTHERS, CAPITALISM, FOOD, INC., SEPTEMBER ISSUE, GOOD HAIR, WALTZ WITH BASHIR, VALENTINO, EVERY LITTLE STEP and IT MIGHT GET LOUD.)

Remember all that talk of the doc doldrums just - wow, was that all of a year and a half ago?

(Shorter) Monday Brief: 2009 Docs Set New Box Office Mark, IDFA Announces & Links

On location in Indiana today, so no in depth Monday Brief this week.

Meantime, check out indieWIRE's recap of this weekend at the box office.  CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY crosses the $10M mark (it's now estimated at $11.6M), making 2009 the first year ever to have 3 nonfictions grossing more than $10M.

Peter Knegt makes some Gotham predictions (nominations announced this afternoon).

Cinema Eye announced 98 eligible nonfiction features for this year's awards.

IDFA announces its 2009 lineup. 

COOKING HISTORY, RACING DREAMS and SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION take prizes at the Chicago Film Festival, Roger Ebert reports.

Steve Pond at The Wrap looks at this year's Oscar Shorts shortlist and ponders HBO's dominance of the category.  

Amanda Hirsch surveys the cost of documentary film websites.

And finally, the directors of the new anti-Climate Change doc NOT EVIL, JUST WRONG recap their recent confrontation of Al Gore at an environment event in Madison, Wisconsin over claims that INCONVENIENT TRUTH contained factual errors. 

The Monday Brief: GOOD HAIR and CAPITALISM Score a Rare (Unprecedented?) 1-2 Punch and ANVIL Guns for Oscar (Really?)

Yesterday, I was at the Film Independent Filmmaker Forum talking about - dum, Dum, DUM - the state of documentary film with Matt Tyrnauer (director of VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR), Laura Gabbert (NO IMPACT MAN), Scott Hamilton Kennedy (THE GARDEN) and distributor/consultant Richard Abramowitz. 

It was no mistake that Tyrnauer and Abramowitz were there.  VALENTINO and ANVIL, a film that Abramowitz worked with the filmmakers to distribute, are two of the most successful docs of the year.  Neither got the offers that they (or their investors) were looking for upon their festival debuts, so they chose to go it alone (or alone with help). 

While the big box office doc stories of 2009 will probably be written by Disney, Michael Moore and a certain forthcoming Sony concert film, it's the ways in which some filmmakers have successfully forged their own paths that may have the most lasting impact.

But for this weekend, tradition reigns - or at least the traditional success of the star-powered doc.  And what's more star-powered than GOOD HAIR, Chris Rock's look at black women and their relationships with their tresses, which took in a reported $1,117,000 on just 186 screens.  Averaging just over $6K per theater, the Jeff Stilson-helmed doc, drew healthy audiences and at least one ridiculous lawsuit.  

The success of GOOD HAIR made this a very rare weekend - in fact, has it ever happened before? - one in which two different nonfiction titles grossed at least $1 million dollars at the box office.  Michael Moore's CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY continued it rapid push toward the $10 million dollar plateau, taking in an estimated $2.7 million for a total cume of just over $9 million.

The Monday Brief (a Day Later): Much Ado About Zenovich & POLANSKI, Big Weekends for CAPITALISM & MORE THAN A GAME

We were out on the road last week at film festivals in Maine and New York (more on that in a later post) during what seemed like a pretty momentous week on the indie film landscape.  And on Sunday night we were without wireless in the New York countryside, so apologies for delivering The Monday Brief a day late.

We start, naturally, with Michael Moore and his latest, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, which expanded from its successful limited engagement in New York and Los Angeles to nearly 1000 theaters, and true to his reputation as the world’s foremost documentarian, Moore scored pretty big in wide release, taking in over $4.4 million for the weekend.  In doing so, CAPITALISM becomes the third biggest nonfiction of the year (surpassing FOOD, INC. and SEPTEMBER ISSUE and lagging only Disney’s EARTH and JONAS BROTHERS 3D).

But with a per screen average of just under $5K (compared to SICKO's opening weekend average of $10K+, on half the screens), CAPITALISM will need strong word-of-mouth and a solid second weekend hold to match the $20M+ total box office take of his three most successful docs.

Still, while CAPITALISM's numbers may be modest for Moore, they still rank as highly successful for your average nonfiction film.

CAPITALISM was not the weekend’s only success story.  Kristopher Belman’s MORE THAN A GAME, retelling the historic high school basketball season of a team that would include future NBA all-star LeBron James, had one of the top doc debuts of the year.  It took in an average of $13K on 14 screens for an opening weekend cume of $182K, putting it just shy of the top 20 docs of the year.

And RJ Cutler’s THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE had another fine weekend in wide release, grossing $220K on 104 screens to bring its total to just shy of $3M. 

But while those three films were drawing folks to theaters this weekend, another film – just as was the case last week – was perhaps the week’s most talked about documentary: Marina Zenovich’s ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED continued to be in the news in the wake of Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland on 30-year old rape charges in the U.S.

The Monday Brief: Indie Film in Hell - The Bloodbath, CineVegas & Polanski, But Signs of Hope With Ondi Timoner's Innovations, CAPITALISM, SEPTEMBER & IT MIGHT GET LOUD

Is the entire indie film world going to hell?  That's been the question vibrating through our community for the past several weeks, particularly after a Toronto International Film Festival that was light on sales and a summary paper issued by Anne Thompson, in which she labeled this year's TIFF an "indie bloodbath":

"The old independent market is over. A new one will take its place. But we are smack in the middle between the end of one paradigm and the start of another, and it’s a scary place indeed...

If nobody knew anything before, they know even less now. The one sure thing is that moviemakers will now PAY to get their films released. The few remaining distributors can sit back and wait for movies to drop in their laps, often with P & A funds attached. All hopes of a hot sale at a festivals were dashed this year."

And if you think filmmakers going to festivals have it bad, what about the festivals themselves?  This year has seen an unprecedented upheaval, as five of the top 10 festivals for documentaries saw a change in leadership (Sundance, Silverdocs, Los Angeles, Tribeca and Full Frame) and a number of film festivals found themselves making news - Toronto over its choice of Tel Aviv for its City to City Spotlight, Los Angeles in its battle with the BANANAS!* filmmakers and lawyers from Dole, SF Jewish Film over its screening of RACHEL, Tokyo due to its rejection-then-capitulation/acceptance of THE COVE, not to mention the coup at the Denver Film Society.  And what does it say about the New York Film Festival if most of NYC's indie film cognoscenti took the first flights out of town to be in Austin for Fantastic Fest, just as NYFF was opening?

Now we learn that CineVegas, one of the best regional festivals in the US, will not be back for its 2010 edition (although they state publicly that they will try to return sometime after that) and yesterday  the news that filmmaker Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland as he was en route to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Zurich Film Festival.

Add to all this what any filmmaker on the festival circuit (including this one) can tell you with certainty - for many festivals, the days of largesse have passed.  No travel, no accommodations, no screening fees.  Oh yeah, and if you want more than a couple tickets to your film, you're going to have to pay for them.

Let that sink in for a moment.

CAPITALISM's Big Friday: $15K+ Estimates Per Screen

According to Len Klady's estimates at Movie City News, Michael Moore's CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY made more than $15K on each of its four screens yesterday, kicking off the weekend with an estimated one-day take of nearly $62K.  Those numbers are stronger than those posted by the film on its opening day (Wednesday, when it made just over $9K) or Thursday (just over $7K). 

The film's total cume through yesterday now stands at around $125,000.  The film gets a wide release this Friday.

CAPITALISM Strong in Wednesday Launch, But Numbers Pale to SICKO, FAHRENHEIT Openers

Michael Moore's CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY opened yesterday on 4 screens in NY & LA and according to estimates at Box Office Mojo, the film had a strong start in its limited mid-week release.  With a per screen average of $9,104, CAPITALISM made far more money on a single screen than any other film yesterday, with the closest being the top film at the box office, CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, which made $390 per screen.

But those numbers look less exciting when compared to Moore's last two released films, SICKO and FAHRENHEIT 9/11. 

FAHRENHEIT - the all-time documentary champ - also opened on a Wednesday, but in two theaters, to a record setting $41,961 average.