All these wonderful things

Oscar Goes Bigger for 2011: EXIT & 4 Other Million Dollar Grossers Lead Shortlist Pack

Yesterday afternoon, the Academy announced its documentary shortlist.  As we mentioned at the time, the headline was that EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP had defied most of the odds to hurdle what we thought would be the most difficult barrier stopping it from winning the Oscar - making the shortlist at all - while the most shocking snub was the failure to advance Laura Poitras' THE OATH, a film that we had pegged as a frontrunner and which had already been nominated for the top award at Cinema Eye, the IDA and the Gothams.

But more about those in a minute.

So, first off, it's not a terrible list.  I've seen a few folks contend that it's off-the-charts bad, and trust me, I've seen off-the-charts bad, and this isn't that.

It's curious, that's certain, but mostly because it's actually the kind of list that I think the Academy has been hoping for for years - a slick, brassy list of 15 that's chockablock full of big films and big directors: there's 5 million-dollar grossers in the bunch (the first time that has ever happened) and that doesn't include the headline-grabbing films about Pat Tillman and Eliot Spitzer and natural gas fracking, nor a just-opening, crowd-pleasing film about Brazilian garbage workers.

That makes at least 9 high-profile titles out of 15, which explains why a number of Oscar prognosticators felt pretty good about this year's list (and their pre-announcement predictions, which had centered on films that had a big theatrical launch and therefore that they'd actually heard of - not usually a good barometer).

A lot of these are big productions, too (which makes sense when you consider that Best Picture at the Oscars goes to the producers, not the directors), and for the first time in several years, many if not most of the big players seem to have a horse in the race - Sony Pictures Classics, Weinstein Co., HBO, NatGeo, Magnolia, Paramount, Cinetic, Oscilloscope (those that don't, like Roadside, either weren't really in the doc game this year or, like Zeitgeist and IFC, missed out with their own high profile titles).

And there are big name directors - two Oscar winners (Gibney and Guggenheim) and another nominee (Charles Ferguson), not to mention perhaps the world's most famous anonymous street artist.

This is the kind of shiny list that a lot of people can be (and likely are) pretty happy with, both inside and outside the Academy.

There are always going to be "snubs".  It's getting so that I dislike even using the word, because a "snub" almost implies that there's something unusual going on.  But if there are 3-5 or more "snubs" every year, it hardly seems novel.  Feels like we need a different word.

The Monday Brief: JOAN RIVERS Opens Big, A Legal Break for Berlinger, Sheffield Moves to June and the P.O.V. Power List

First off, apologies for the break in posting.  Between traveling to New York, working on various projects and the start of the Los Angeles Film Festival, I've found myself starting several posts (including the last two Monday Briefs) only to watch them go unfinished.

Truth is, this summer might be somewhat light in our coverage around these parts, although we're gonna endeavor to stay on track this month to cover two of the year's most important festivals for documentary - LAFF, which launched seemingly successfully in its new downtown digs last Thursday, and Silverdocs, which kicks off tomorrow...

In the interim, there's been a lot of news in the documentary world - shifting dates for a top festival, a legal victory for a noted filmmaker and a list that does what lists tend to do: get people talking.

But the past two weekends, the biggest headlines in the doc world were made by a film that premiered at Sundance...

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's docu-portrait, JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, was the big winner at the specialty box office the past two weekends.  Opening a week ago at 7 theaters (but as indieWIRE noted - on three separate screens at NYC's IFC Center), the film took in an estimated $24,368 - the biggest per theater debut for a doc this year.  In its first weekend, the film took in more than $170K, more than the combined total take of Stern and Sundberg's previous two (critically acclaimed and super serious) docs, THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT and THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK.

In its second weekend, the film cooled off only slightly as it expanded to 29 screens, managing a still strong average of just under $8K per screen, bringing its grand total thus far to more than $475K.  According to Peter Knegt's iW piece, IFC Films plans an aggressive rollout for the film, expanding to the top fifty markets by the 4th of July.  It could be the doc of the summer (at the box office at least), and seems likely to become the 4th $1M doc of 2010 (following BABIES, OCEANS and EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP).

Also fairing quite well last weekend was Madeleine Sackler's charter schools documentary THE LOTTERY.  Variance Films released the doc on a single NYC screen to a potent $17K+.  THE LOTTERY screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival and a handful of top regional fests (Sarasota, IFFBoston, Cleveland among them) before its quick and successful theatrical launch.

This weekend saw the release of another Sundance doc, 8: THE MORMON PROPOSITION, the first out of the box for Red Flag Releasing.  Released on 16 screens, the film took in an average of more than $3K.

Segueing out of the theatrical box office, news continued to break last week in the Joe Berlinger/Chevron/CRUDE footage case.  And this time the news was good (at least for anyone who cares about documentary)...

A federal appeals court granted Berlinger a temporary stay in the case and will soon rule on his appeal of the lower court judge's decision that he must turn over his raw footage to Chevron.  This means Berlinger won't have to turn over the footage immediately, which would have been the case if the appeals court had denied his petition for a stay.

Berlinger's lawyer, Maura Wogan, told the NY Times that if the court hadn't granted the stay, "(Berlinger) would have been forced to turn over this material before the appeal was heard – he would have, in effect, lost his right to an appeal."

Berlinger will join filmmaker Morgan Spurlock for a special Stranger Than Fiction this Tuesday at NYC's IFC Center.  The event will be a benefit for Berlinger's legal defense fund.

But perhaps the biggest news of the past week was announced with relatively little fanfare.  Confirming rumors that have been circulating for months (we even included them in our festival profile last December), Sheffield Doc/Fest announced that their 2011 edition will be held in early June.  That means two Doc/Fests in Sheffield separated by little more than seven months (they will still hold this year's event the first week of November).

2009 IN REVIEW: The Year in Nonfiction Heroes

Yes, yes, we know.  It's February 1 and we're still looking back at 2009.  Call us belated, call us procrastinators, but we still have a word or three to offer about the year that's now a month past.  Last year we offered a list of ten folks who've made the community a better place in 2008.  Here's our list of 2009's nonfiction heroes:

Cinereach

2009 marked the year that Cinereach broke through as a major grant player – but with a significant twist.  Their first high profile film, OCTOBER COUNTRY, was known less for its social justice/liberal agenda perspective than for its artistry.

Sean Farnel

Through his seafar blog, the guru of Hot Docs gave readers an unvarnished and thoroughly revealing look at the process behind programming a major documentary festival.  By examining his own process so publicly, Farnel gave filmmakers a unique opportunity to understand what happens throughout a curator’s year – from fests to submissions to hundreds of index cards thump tacked to a wall.

The Board of Film Independent

There were those who deplored the actions of Film Independent and the Los Angeles Film Festival in their handling of the controversial documentary, BANANAS!*, but we found the organization’s dedication to screening the film – even in the threat of lawsuit – courageous.  For those who believe otherwise, rest assured there are plenty of film festivals and organizations that wouldn’t have taken the risk.

A Film With No Stars Gets Picked Up

As speculated here, the film Roadside Attractions' head Howard Cohen was talking about when he said,

     "In truth, we're nervous about acquiring a movie without
     a well-known cast. We're considering a movie now that
     we love, but it has no stars. We've agonized about it for
     an entire year."

may indeed have been one of my favorites from last year's Sundance Film Festival, The Puffy Chair.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Roadside is joining forces with Netflix to distribute The Puffy Chair to theatres this June, in a sign of Netflix's growing desire to move into more and more sides of film distribution.

Indiewire had listed Puffy Chair as one of the top 10 undistributed films of 2005. As noted by Self-Reliant, the Puffy Chair pick-up and IFC's acquiring of I Am a Sex Addict makes the list now 8 films.

Getting the Right Name

Interesting article in the Hollywood Reporter about how the search for big-name stars to appear in low budget indies is changing the independent film world. I wrote about the trend in August after the debuts of the cast-packed films Thumbsucker and Chumbscrubber.

The HR article cites Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know & Phil Morrison's Junebug as successful anomalies and quotes Roadside Attractions' Howard Cohen saying that without stars, "the movie has to be amazing."

     "In truth, we're nervous about acquiring a movie without
     a well-known cast. We're considering a movie now that
     we love, but it has no stars. We've agonized about it for
     an entire year."