All these wonderful things

Charles Ferguson Wins the DGA Documentary Award for INSIDE JOB

Saturday night in Los Angeles, Charles Ferguson picked up the DGA Award for INSIDE JOB, winning top honors from a field that included Davis Guggenheim (WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'), Alex Gibney (CLIENT 9), Lixin Fan (LAST TRAIN HOME) and Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger (RESTREPO).

The presentation of the award picked up some unexpected humor/irony as presenter Helen Mirren lamented the poor financial state of documentary filmmakers just before presenting the award to Ferguson, who a decade ago sold his software company to Microsoft for more than $100 million dollars.

The DGA win is an important one for the Oscar-nominated INSIDE JOB, which was regarded as this year's Oscar favorite after its debut last May at Cannes, but which, in terms of major awards, had only scored a New York Film Critics Circle prize prior to Saturday, where it narrowly topped the surging EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (also Oscar-nommed).  EXIT director Banksy was not nominated for the DGA award.

Other than the NYFCC, the few times that INSIDE JOB has gone head-to-head with EXIT, neither film came out the victor.  Both were nominated for Audience Choice and Production at the Cinema Eye Honors (JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK and LAST TRAIN HOME took those awards, respectively, although EXIT did win two awards including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature) and for the Broadcast Film Critics Award (where WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' won).  JOB was nomned for the Gotham Award, but lost out to THE OATH.

A Week of Awards Confirms That It's a Wide Open Oscar Race

If anyone thought that the first week of year-end film awards was going to help settle on a frontrunner for the Documentary Feature Oscar, they were mistaken.

In fact, the scattershot results only confirmed that this year's race is the most wide-open contest in years.

First, the Gothams settled on shockingly-out-of-the-race THE OATH for their documentary prize winner.  Next, as they announced their nods, the Spirits bypassed heavyweights like INSIDE JOB and WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN', settling instead on shortlisted titles like EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and RESTREPO.

Then Thursday, the National Board of Review, which has a shockingly good record as an Oscar predictor in the past decade, handed its top docu prize to Davis Guggenheim's 'SUPERMAN' and annointed A FILM UNFINISHED, INSIDE JOB, JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, RESTREPO and THE TILLMAN STORY as runners-up. 

The next day, the Producers Guild named six nominees for their Documentary Award: CLIENT 9, EARTH MADE OF GLASS, INSIDE JOB, SMASH HIS CAMERA, THE TILLMAN STORY and 'SUPERMAN'.  Only Deborah Scranton's EARTH and Leon Gast's SMASH weren't on the Academy Shortlist.

Later that night, Lucy Walker's WASTE LAND recieved the most votes from the IDA membership and won that organization's top prize, besting EXIT.

But the next day, both WASTE LAND and EXIT lost out at the British Independent Film Awards - with the victory going to shortlisted doc ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.

Then, over the weekend, the DC Film Critics became the first critics group to weigh in, naming their nominees on Saturday and their winners on Sunday.  The five nominees were all shortlisters: EXIT, INSIDE JOB, RESTREPO, TILLMAN and 'SUPERMAN' - and the winner was Banksy's EXIT.

Finally, at Sunday's European Film Awards, the Documentary prize went to Patricio Guzman's NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (the other two nominees were ARMADILLO and STEAM OF LIFE).

And as critics are now weighing in with their lists of top films (in addition to their awards), we should note that Sight and Sound's list of films of 2010 includes several documentaries, including THE ARBOR (#5), THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUSESCU and NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIST (tied at #8) and EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (tied at #20).

New York Magazine's David Edelstein also weighed in, listing 4 docs in a top 11 for the year: CLIENT 9 and INSIDE JOB tied at #2, EXIT at #8 and MARWENCOL at #9.

The coming week is a bit quieter, but next weekend we get the Boston, Los Angeles and New York critics to weigh in one after the other.

So if you're tallying at home, here's how the week went for the Shortlisted films:

As Critics Prepare to Weigh in, THE OATH and MARWENCOL Still Lead Honor Roll

Think of it as a different kind of shortlist. 

The Academy weighed in their list of 15 films that will move forward in the Oscar race.  Some of those titles have done really well in awards and nominations leading up to the Granddaddy of them all while others haven't made a blip on the radar until now.

On our annual Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll, we usually find that things really begin to coallesce as the year ends.  Thus far we've heard from festival juries & audiences, and we've got nominees for each of the year's other big nonfiction awards (Spirits, Cinema Eye, IDA & Gothams).Starting today, with the National Board of Review weighing in on the year's best films, we'll start hearing from critics groups and then the various guilds.

But if we were to take the information we have to date - which 15 films would make the Honor Roll shortlist?  [We'll give you a hint - only 6 of the 15 are on the Academy's shortlist.]

The Gothams Curse Lives! Laura Poitras Wins Best Doc for THE OATH

In a case of sweet justice - but also sign that the two award bodies just don't see eye to eye - Laura Poitras' THE OATH took home the Gotham Award tonight for Best Documentary, besting Oscar favorite INSIDE JOB and insuring that the Gothams Curse continues - no doc has ever won the Gotham and the Oscar in the same year.

THE OATH was famously left off the Academy's shortlist of 15 - perhaps the most egregious omission since Werner Herzog's GRIZZLY MAN - when Oscar announced its favorites just over a week ago.  THE OATH is nominated for Best Documentary at Friday's IDA Awards and has four nominations at January's Cinema Eye Honors, including Outstanding Feature and Outstanding Direction.

But as we speculated earlier today, INSIDE JOB may have been hoping for a snub tonight considering the history between the Gothams and Oscar.  One can only wonder if there will be any juice for WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN', which received the Gotham's first Audience Award.

Next up - Spirit Award nominations in the AM on Tuesday.

 

The Shortlist is Coming! The Shortlist is Coming!

'Twas the week before Thanksgiving and all through the house, all the documentary filmmakers were waiting to hear whether they'd made the Academy's list of 15 features that would vie for the Best Documentary Oscar.  Word on the street is that the announcement could come as early as today and as late as Monday.  And no one is sure whether the Academy will give the shortlisted filmmaker a heads-up phone call, as was the practice for years, or whether the list will be sprung without warning, as happened in 2009.

We did a early-prediction piece back in September that tried to assess the state of the Oscar campaigns coming at the eligibility deadline.  And back then, we named INSIDE JOB and RESTREPO as the two frontrunners.

We're no longer so sure about that...

We still think that INSIDE JOB is toward the front of the pack - the Charles Ferguson film has built on its early critical huzzahs out of Cannes and has settled in nicely at the box office: 1.5M and counting. RESTREPO, meanwhile, seems to have stumbled a bit.  Its summer release is getting not the tiniest bit overshadowed by the soon-to-be-released, super-cinematic Danish film ARMADILLO (which, not for nothing, scored 6 Cinema Eye nominations a couple weeks ago).  ARMADILLO is also in the hunt for this year's Oscar.

I'd still be very surprised if RESTREPO isn't on the shortlist when it's unveiled, but the omission isn't out-of-the-question.

Also bumped up to front-runner status: Davis Guggenheim's zeitgeisty WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'.  Take away the fact that Guggenheim already has his Oscar (and his family has something like half a dozen), 'SUPERMAN' is certain to be the biggest "serious issue" doc of 2010 - at least at the box office - and that usually has meant something.  Plus, Guggenheim is known throughout the larger film community as a good guy who moves adeptly between nonfiction and narrative.

Still, when you go out into the documemtary community - and that's the path all these films must take to get a nomination - it's hard to find folks who LOVE either film.  You find a lot of respect for the solid way that the films were made, but nobody's really doing cartwheels.

It's a third film - the only one to score nominations from Cinema Eye, the IDA and the Gothams thus far - that people really seem to love: Laura Poitras' THE OATH.

We think it's a near-lock for a nomination.  And it may (crazy as it sounds) have a shot to win it all.  Here's why:

Gotham Awards 2010 Nominees Include Oscar Hopefuls and Scorsese's PUBLIC SPEAKING

The Gotham Awards have just announced their nominees for 2010 and the five films nominated in the Best Documentary category are:

12TH AND DELAWARE
Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

INSIDE JOB
Directed by Charles Ferguson

THE OATH
Directed by Laura Poitras

PUBLIC SPEAKING
Directed by Martin Scorsese

SWEETGRASS
Directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor

INSIDE JOB is one of the frontrunners for next year's Academy Awards and is just now rolling out in theaters in North America.  Both THE OATH and 12TH AND DELAWARE had lower-key theatrical releases earlier this year preceding their television broadcasts (THE OATH on POV and DELAWARE on HBO).  The directors of all three films - Ferguson, Poitras, Ewing & Grady - are previous Oscar nominees and favorites to make this year's Academy shortlist.

SWEETGRASS premiered at last year's New York Film Festival while Scorsese's PUBLIC SPEAKING - a profile of quintissential New York writer Fran Lebowitz - is set to premiere on HBO next month.

Meanwhile, in the Gotham's Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You category - which has, at least recently, featured a single nonfiction film mixed with four fiction features - three documentaries are nominated - Robert Greene's KATI WITH AN I (set to screen in the Viewfinders Competition at next month's inaugural DOC NYC), Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Woods' ON COAL RIVER (which premiered at Silverdocs and recently screened in Camden and at NYC's Stranger Than Fiction) and Lynn True and Nelson George's SUMMER PASTURE (which screened as part of the IDA's DocuWeeks Academy qualifying series this summer).  Those films will mix it up with Laurel Nakadate's THE WOLF KNIFE and LITTLEROCK by filmmaker Mike Ott.

indieWIRE has all the nominees, led by the SW Missouri-shot narrative feature WINTER'S BONE.  The awards will be handed out on November 29.

Artists, Activists and The Enigma: Seven of 2010's Essential Nonfiction Features

No one is going to argue that this has been an extraordinary year for nonfiction film.

Film blogger Scott Feinberg has even gone so far as to declare 2010 "The Year of the Documentary" - "the strongest - or, at the very least, the deepest - year yet in the history of documentary filmmaking".

The other week I had a conversation with someone who I frequently discuss the various politics and maneauverings of the Oscar race for Best Documentary and we agreed that this year it was entirely possible to come up with three completely different lists of five nominees - and that each list would be not just acceptable but pretty sterling.

But let's take Oscar (and Cinema Eye and IDA and Spirits and Gothams and critics prizes) out of the equation for a little while...

I actually meant to write this post back in June, when I'd already seen so many tremendous films - by newcomers and veterans alike.  But I put it off because I had so many other films that I hadn't seen yet - and I still have not seen a number of the year's most talked about films (INSIDE JOB, CATFISH, TILLMAN STORY, CLIENT 9, LAST TRAIN HOME and ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE).

But - as evidenced by this intro - talking about these films as we go into October changes the conversation from the stuff I loved in early 2010 to the stuff that should be considered going into awards season.  There's little to do about that other than to plunge forward.

A final caveat - just picking these seven films from the list of great and near-great stuff I saw in 2010 was a challenge in itself.  I could easily include RESTREPO, BUDRUS, MY PERESTROIKA, SPACE TOURISTS and a handful of others.

But thus far, these are the films that have settled in with me for the long haul and these are the films that have made my documentary viewing in 2010 so exceptional:

Perhaps my favorite film of 2010 thus far is Banksy’s EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP – a skillful, note-perfect dissection of art world hype and the often thorny creative process. 

THE COVE Wins WGA Award, Becomes First Doc to Sweep Guild Prizes

Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE pulled off a pretty remarkable feat tonight, winning the Writers Guild Award for Documentary Screenplay and thus becoming the first nonfiction feature to sweep all four of the guild prizes awarded for documentaries - the Producers, Directors and Editors.  The American Society of Cinematographers does not offer a documentary prize.

In so doing, THE COVE continues a nearly non-stop winning spree leading up to this year's Oscars, which will be presented two weeks from tomorrow, and where THE COVE is widely expected to win the Best Documentary Feature prize.

The WGA prize went to THE COVE's writer Mark Monroe.  Of the six nominees in the category, THE COVE was the only film whose director was not nominated for the writing prize (other hopefuls included CAPITALISM's Michael Moore and GOOD HAIR's director Jeff Stilson and star Chris Rock).

Early on, THE COVE was shut out by the Gothams and Spirit Awards and was only nominated for the Pare Lorentz Award (not Documentary Feature) at the IDA Awards, which it did not win.  At the time, the momentum appeared to be with Robert Kenner's FOOD, INC. and Sacha Gervasi's ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, the latter of which triumphed at the IDA's despite not making the Academy's documentary feature shortlist (that film will likely take the Spirit Award for Best Documentary Friday night prior to the Oscars).

But beginning with a series of critics prizes in December and continuing with three wins at last month's Cinema Eye Honors, it now appears all but certain that Psihoyos and producer Fisher Stevens will take home the Oscar.

The Monday Brief: Wrapping Sundance, Our Oscar Predictions and Can THE COVE Break the DGA Curse?

Holy cow, it's February already?  That means we are 1/120 of the way through the twenty-teens.

More the the point, with the wrap of Sundance yesterday, we now have a sense of where the year is heading and some of the films we'll still be talking about next year at this time.  Think about it, by this point last year we already had our first looks at Oscar shortlisters THE COVE, FOOD INC., THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS, BURMA VJ, VALENTINO and EVERY LITTLE STEP (the above a mix of Sundance and Toronto '08 titles).  Which films from this year's Sundance will we be still talking about in early 2011?

A word of caution to folks celebrating RESTREPO's grand jury win at Sundance - only 3 films in the past decade won the Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize and went on to be nominated for an Oscar.  Can you name them? (answer a little later in our broadcast)

If you were hearing the buzz out of IDFA (and from certain quarters it was deafening), one can't help but be surprised that Lixin Fan's LAST TRAIN HOME failed to pick up a single award in the World Cinema Documentary competition.  The jury for that strand (which included filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, PBS correspondent Jeffrey Brown and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival director Asako Fujioka) seemed to value films that made them laugh - aside from editing winner A FILM UNFINISHED and special jury prize recipient ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE), they heaped prizes on three films (THE RED CHAPEL, HIS & HERS and SPACE TOURISTS) that were notable for their use of humor.

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.