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.
It's anybody's guess which of next year's doc releases will have box office success (although I'll wager an evening of drinks that the top nonfiction release of the year is gonna come out on October 15), but the past couple weeks has brought acquistions news re: a number of this year's high profile docs. Koch Lorber has picked up rights to Erik Gandini's VIDEOCRACY, the jury winner at this year's Sheffield Doc/Fest; First Run will release Kimberly Reed's PRODIGAL SONS and Cinema Guild will distribute Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s SWEETGRASS. The latter film opens in early January at Film Forum in New York.
December can sometimes be a slow news month, but not this year, with the brutal debate over health care and the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen. The latter had at least two overlaps with the documentary world. First, Robert Greene's film, OWNING THE WEATHER, which debuted at Full Frame and examines scientific geoengineering (basically the ways in which man can change weather patterns) screened at the conference. Greene and his team have posted a video recap of the screening, along with interviews with a number of scientists who spoke at a post screening conference:
Meanwhile, the Yes Men couldn't let the Hopenhagen go without staging at least one of their pranks, in one case posing as Coca-Cola employees who ask others to vow never to drink Coke products again until Coke stops taking water from communities around the world. Here's a video of the mock press conference:
And here's a behind-the-scenes look at how the prank went down:
Holiday reading: Manohla Dargis' now-infamous, fuck-laced, guantlet-throwdown against Hollywood, Ray Pride re-visits GIMME SHELTER with Al Maysles, Stephen Saito recaps some of the year's best spats involving film critics (The Dude v. John Anderson! Glenn Kenny v. Joe Swanberg!), Tom Roston revisits the docs of 2009 at POV Blog, while a bunch of folks get in on naming the "best docs of the decade": The Playlist, Erin Donovan at Steady Diet of Film and Aaron Hillis writing at IFC's Naughts Project.
Other stuff we missed the past couple weeks: Sundance announces its short films, Variety plays glass-half-full/glass-half-empty with the Oscar doc shortlist (the fun is in practically seeing their wheels turning furiously trying to come up with nonsensical reasons for each film to have a shot at a nomination and simultaneously be in trouble), and Paramount announces a micro-budget division.
With that, we're gonna settle down for a long winter's nap.
And a Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
See you in the new year/decade.
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