With Los Angeles abuzz in pre-Oscar festivities, it seems that it's become time to weigh in on this year's awards and to offer a few predictions about who might go home with some hardware.
Saturday afternoon, amidst what is predicted to be a stormy and cold Spirit Awards under the tent in Santa Monica, it seems safe to say that the Documentary Feature award will go to either EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP or RESTREPO. The history of the Spirit Awards is that, in the documentary category at least, exposure/box office potency = the win. Only twice in the ten years of the Best Documentary award has the winner not been a film with the highest box office take - last year was one of those when ANVIL! topped FOOD, INC.
[Check out our list of all of the Spirit Awards nominees and winners in the documentary categories here.]
With that said, it's hard to imagine that the FIND membership will go with MARWENCOL or SWEETGRASS, which had lower-profile theatrical releases, or to THUNDER SOUL, which is set to be released by Roadside Attractions this fall.
Just by tradition alone, you'd have to pick EXIT as the winner here. It grossed about three times the amount that RESTREPO did, and it fits in with the pop culture themes that tend to win on Saturday (i.e. previous winners DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, SOME KIND OF MONSTER, ANVIL!). A non-pop culture, vérite-style film, which, aside from a sprinkling of interviews with the subjects, RESTREPO is, hasn't won the Documentary award at the Spirits since 2000 (DARK DAYS).
Note: MARWENCOL and SWEETGRASS, along with SUMMER PASTURE, were nominated for the Spirit Awards' grant prize, the Truer Than Fiction Award, which recognizes upcoming nonfiction filmmakers (and which has been won in the past by Bill and Turner Ross (45365), Margaret Brown (THE ORDER OF MYTHS) and Ian Olds & Garrett Scott (OPERATION: DREAMLAND). For the first time in the Spirit Awards history, this award (along with the other grant prizes for upcoming narrative filmmaker and producer) will not be announced during the Spirit Awards themselves - they were shifted to a brunch event that took place in January. MARWENCOL was named as this year's winner.
So, if EXIT looks like a straight-away winner at the Spirit Awards, then the question is whether Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz triumph on Sunday afternoon in the Kodak Theatre.
Still, the conventional wisdom amongst Academy members and awards watchers is that the race probably boils down to a three-way contest between EXT, INSIDE JOB and WASTE LAND, with most predicting INSIDE JOB as the winner.
There are lots of reasons to side with INSIDE JOB. It's a prestige pick, it's the highest grossing film of the five nominees (it's made about $600,000 more than EXIT) and its makers - Charles Ferguson and Audrey Mars - were nominated three years ago for NO END IN SIGHT. Indeed, many thought Ferguson and Mars would win for that film (it went to Alex Gibney for TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE instead), so there may be some folks who want to reward the quality of both films.
Fun fact: with their nominations for INSIDE JOB, Ferguson and Mars become two of just 33 people in Oscar history to score two documentary feature nominations. The feat is so rare, it's only happened 9 times since 1990 (the other seven are Arthur Cohn, Deborah Dickson, Alex Gibney, Rick Goldsmith, Michael Moore, Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond, with Cohn, Gibney, Moore and the Raymonds each winning at least once).
[Check out our list of every Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature here.]
The other thing going for INSIDE JOB references something that Charles Ferguson said at Wednesday night's reception and panel at the Motion Picture Academy. He said that he and Mars decided that if they were going to piss people off, "we were going to fucking do it in style".
And as someone who didn't see INSIDE JOB projected on a screen (as I had the other four nominated features), when that first image from Ferguson's film popped up on the screen at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theatre, I was pretty gobsmacked. It was one of the film's stunning Manhattan cityscapes and it positively shimmered on the screen. It gave the film an epic quality that I'd not experienced watching a screener copy. And since the Academy must view the documentary nominees in a theatre, one shouldn't dismiss the fact that INSIDE JOB looks pretty great.
A perceived surge for Lucy Walker's WASTE LAND began a few weeks ago as reports began to circulate that audiences at the Academy screenings were over-the-moon for the film, no surprise perhaps given the film's haul of film festival Audience Awards. And in the last few weeks, there's been something of a whispering campaign that targeted the film (and whether Walker did the bulk of the directing work), which spoke to the notion that someone, perhaps one of the other nominees, felt like WASTE LAND was a real threat. But since the whispers didn't truly go public until yesterday when Salon's Andrew O'Hehir addressed them (after the balloting had closed, it should be said), there was no opportunity for the filmmakers to respond or for a backlash to form during the actual voting, so it's unclear how widespread or how effective such a campaign was.
Still, the talk of WASTE LAND winning feels like something that has happened often in recent years - the underdog film that is playing extremely well at the screenings with (a) subject(s) that everyone likes and wants to see rewarded. Two years ago it was Scott Hamilton Kennedy's THE GARDEN. Last year, it was the DANIEL ELLSBERG film. In the end, neither film took the award, although many suspect they finished stronger than most expect.
However, we have said more than once that this is a passion year - as the Documentary Feature race often is - and one can't underplay the fact that WASTE LAND truly plays to audience's passions. Perhaps the biggest thing standing in the way of WASTE LAND winning is what I suspect is a much stronger than expected showing for GASLAND (we predicted it as a nominee for months even as others saw it as a long shot). Although GASLAND and WASTE LAND couldn't be different films, they both share environmental concerns, and there's a strong possibility that some of the support that would go to WASTE LAND is headed to Josh Fox instead, particularly those who want to poke a finger in the eye of the energy industry (who have attacked GASLAND's nomination).
RESTREPO certainly has a chance in the category, but perhaps has an uphill climb with its vérite, non-political look at the war in Afghanistan. No true vérite film has won here in over a decade, particularly not one that didn't have a social justice message at its core.
Which leaves Banksy's EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, which we have already stated would have our vote if we had one to give.
There are a bunch of reasons why EXIT shouldn't win - pop culture films don't win, portraiture films don't win, films by anonymous directors who've never made a documentary before can't win - but these are the same reasons why EXIT should never have been shortlisted or nominated to begin with.
Watching host Michael Apted aggressively query producer Jaimie D'Cruz on the panel at the Academy on Wednesday night and reading the numerous articles that detailed the Oscar organizers dithering over what to do with Banksy (you'd think the whole thing was going to give Bruce Davis and Tom Sherak the vapors), you couldn't help but feel some at the Academy feel like Banksy pissed in their cornflakes. While Apted treated the other nominees with something akin to respect (as one would expect from a ceremony that publicly welcomes nominees to the Oscar family), he interrogated D'Cruz on Banksy's true role in the film and suggested DGA rules wouldn't allow Banksy a directing credit.
You couldn't help but feel that some folks really couldn't understand how the acclaimed but mysterious artist was now an Oscar nominee - and that they wanted to make their displeasure known.
Steve Pond, who has been a keen Oscar watcher from his post over at The Wrap, is predicting INSIDE JOB (although he adds that "I don't trust this pick") based, in part, on its guild wins at the DGA and WGA. INSIDE also took the New York Film Critics prize.
But aside from those, INSIDE JOB had a far quieter awards season than most expected six months ago, and if INSIDE wins, it will be just the second film* after-COLUMBINE (the smash hit PENGUINS was the other) to win the Oscar without having first won an award at either the Spirit Awards, the IDAs or at Cinema Eye. [TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE was nominated for the IDA Award for Best Feature and won the Cinema Eye for Direction, although the Cinema Eye Honors took place after the Oscars that year.]
Plus, the guild wins were on a different playing field. INSIDE JOB didn't have to face off against either EXIT or WASTE LAND at either the DGA (the only other Oscar nominee was RESTREPO) or the WGA (where the only other nominee was GASLAND).
INSIDE JOB has one other thing going against it - no film with a traditional narration and multiple talking heads approach has won the Oscar in the post-COLUMBINE era. In fact, Ferguson's films are two of the only such films to even be nominated by the Academy.
So where does that leave us?
I get the reasons why most are predicting INSIDE JOB and I can make a strong case for why it will win. But my gut says something different - and, thus far at least, my gut's been fairly on target.
So, while not a sure thing, and granting that my bias toward the film may be influencing my feelings, I have a sneaking suspicion that we will get to find out what happens when Banksy's name is called on Sunday. If EXIT can make the shortlist and get nominated, why can't it win?
The head may say INSIDE JOB, but the gut says it's Banksy and Jaimie.
As for the shorts, it feels like a real toss-up. Usually the Wednesday night Academy reception reveals some clues - there was a huge reaction for MUSIC BY PRUDENCE last year - but this year the audience reaction was fairly even across the board.
Likewise, conversations with Academy members revealed no overwhelming choice - I heard folks who were partisans for POSTER GIRL, SUN COME UP and particularly for THE WARRIORS OF QIUGANG.
On paper, however, you'd have to think that STRANGERS NO MORE by veteran docmakers Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon has the upper hand. It's subject matter (school children in Tel Aviv) and an inspiring ending certainly feel like they reside right in Oscar's wheelhouse. So, I'm going with STRANGERS.
Predictions
Academy Awards Best Documentary Feature
EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
Academy Awards Best Documentary Short Subject
STRANGERS NO MORE
Independent Spirit Awards
EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
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