All these wonderful things

The Top 25 Film Festivals for Documentaries, 2nd Edition - 6 That Would've Made the List If Only They...

Previously: 9 More International Festivals That Matter

In figuring out which film festivals would make up the 2nd round of our Documentary Film Festival survey, there were a number of festivals which stood out as important and potentially monumental in the life of a film.  They have brand value (people have heard of them) and they have distributors attending (sales potential).  But they barely show any docs - not just American docs, but any docs.  So, herewith are...

Five festivals that would've made the list if only they showed more documentaries:

Cannes Film Festival

Important Recent Premieres:  MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER, A THORN IN THE HEART, TYSON, WALTZ WITH BASHIR

Our coverage of Cannes here.

Others:

Filmmaker:  "It's a market, but not really for docs."

Industry:  "If you’re a filmmaker and you get a film in Cannes, it looks really good on your resume.  Not sure it does much for the film.  You might be a little bit marginalized there.  If you’re waiting for Cannes to give you an answer and you are passing on SXSW or Full Frame or Hot Docs, then I think you’re making a huge mistake.  Even getting into Cannes may not be as good as playing 2 or 3 of these spring festivals.  99% of the time it doesn’t work out."

Industry:  "The ultimate prestige event for docs, but they take so few that it's not a must-attend."

Industry:  "I love Cannes.  Cannes is a secret to me.  Everybody’s there.  Everybody’s there from all over the world.  You can see so many films.  It’s a great value for what you can see.  But they show so few documentaries – it’s kind of crazy."

Michael Moore's CAPITALISM Debuts in Venice to Conflicted Reviews

Late last week, Michael Moore's latest film, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY debuted at the Venice Film Festival - and while a few critics were enthusiastic about the superstar doc director's new effort, most had a mixed response, often due to perceptions about Moore's tactics and style. 

Of course, with Michael Moore, it's always about the messenger rather than the message, so some of this is to be expected.  But you can sense film writers/critics wanting to immunize themselves from charges that they are "in the tank" for Moore and/or his liberal politics.  Thus, the litany of complaints that have loomed over Moore since ROGER AND ME are trotted out, even if there's a sense that the overall film "works".

The review from Variety's Leslie Felperin is a case-in-point.  While she calls CAPITALISM "one of his best films", she follows with:

"(T)here's still plenty here to annoy right-wingers, as well as those who, however much they agree with Moore's politics, just can't stomach his oversimplification, on-the-nose sentimentality and goofball japery."

Worse, at least for those of us who pay attention to theatrical box office, Felperin gives Moore's an impossible bench mark - one that is sure to be used by conservatives over the next few months:

"Whether "Capitalism" matches FAHRENHEIT 9/11 or underperforms like SICKO will depend on how much workers of the world are ready to unite behind the message."

The notion that SICKO underperformed was a right-wing staple then and now, as if being Moore's #2 film and the second-highest grossing political documentary of all time is some kind of disappointment. 

But what happens if/when CAPITALISM fails to make SICKO numbers - and, possibly more likely, fails to pass Disneynature's EARTH as the top documentary of the year (which would be the first time a Michael Moore documentary doesn't end the year at number one)?

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY has its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this Sunday night.  More conflicted review excerpts from the Venice premiere after the jump.

The Monday Brief: IT Does GET LOUD in Theatres, A Tough Week for THE COVE and WOODSTOCK At 39

Good morning.  We're more than halfway through August and just under three weeks away from the World Premiere of Michael Moore's CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY at La Biennale di Venezia...

But the big documentary news of the weekend is the stellar debut of the new film from another Oscar winner.  Davis Guggenheim's IT MIGHT GET LOUD, the story of the electric guitar as seen through Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White, broke out this weekend - and big.  Playing at just 7 theaters, the Sony Pictures Classics release made more than $100K, marking the best release for a documentary this year that was playing on more than 2 screens. 

IT MIGHT GET LOUD continues the sensational nonfiction streak for SPC this year, coming on the heels of WALTZ WITH BASHIR (just under $2.3M) EVERY LITTLE STEP ($1.6M and still going) and even TYSON ($886K).

It also marks the latest nonfiction feature from the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival to become a hit with moviegoers (following BASHIR, VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR, EVERY LITTLE STEP and FOOD, INC.  Together, those five titles (including IT MIGHT GET LOUD) have taken in nearly $8.5M.  The highest grossing Sundance film this year is ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL from the 2008 fest (although many haven't been released yet).

One 2009 Sundance title that entered theatres with lofty expectations - huge box office, Oscar nominations, changing maritime law - was THE COVE.  But this was not a good week for that film in terms of the things that worry filmmakers and distributors - box office and press. 

First, despite strong reviews and a new promotional push - including an appearance by director Louie Psihoyos on the Today Show - the film slipped to a per theater average of just $1,660 this weekend and a total cume of $424K.  It now looks like the film will have to struggle to make it to $1M at the box office Worse was a piece in the LA Times by John Horn that used THE COVE as the poster child for why environmental docs aren't working at the box office (we wondered why Horn never bothered to mention Disney's EARTH in his story).  It's never a good sign to have your distributor (in this case, Roadside Attractions' Howard Cohen) quoted as saying, "It's not what we would have hoped" and "the concept of the movie is much more off-putting than the experience of watching it".

Moore's CAPITALISM Will Screen in Toronto (and Prolly Venice Too)

The Toronto International Film Festival announced another round of films today, including what had been the missing elephant in the room - Michael Moore's CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY.  With the film's early October release date - and Moore's long history with the Canadian festival - it seemed a sure bet that his latest film would preem there, but until today, nothing was official.

TIFF is calling CAPITALISM a North American Premiere, which has led to speculation that the film will have its World Premiere next month at the Venice Film Festival.  Will it also sneak at Telluride?

Also of note to nonfiction fans is the return to Toronto of Werner Herzog - this time with his fiction film, BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS.  If the trailer for this Nicholas Cage project is any indication, expect it to be one of the most talked about films of the late summer/early fall festival season (it's also billed as a North American Premiere so Venice and possibly Telluride are likely for it as well).

Split Decisions: Film Critics Divide Over Major Fall Fest Titles

With Telluride over, Venice in full flower and Toronto just days away, some of the fall's biggest narrative films are finally getting public airings, and for the most part they are stirring polarity amongst film critics.  Glancing at GreenCine Daily's definitive wrap-ups of critical responses out of Colorado and Italy is enough to make your head spin.

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD is either "a ravishing, magisterial, poetic epic that moves its characters toward their tragic destinies with all the implacability of a Greek drama" or "the most pretentious studio release in a decade!!!".

The Iraq war provocation REDACTED shows that "Brian De Palma's filmmaking skills have seldom been as razor sharp as they are in his sensational new film" or it's a "[d]eeply felt but dramatically unconvincing 'fictional documentary' [... that...] has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can't make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form".  (See previous post for more about REDACTED fauxcumentary-style.)

George Clooney's new film MICHAEL CLAYTON?  "A highly accomplished first feature" says one London critic, as another writes that "it's poorly edited and tries too hard to be a Seventies-style conspiracy thriller".

The trades also split on IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH, Paul Haggis' follow-up to Best Picture winner CRASH (wow, that still pains to type), with The Hollywood Reporter reviewing that the director "avoided the dreaded sophomore slump... In the Valley of Elah is a deeply reflective, quietly powerful work that is as timely as it is moving" but Variety writes that it's "too self-serious to work as a straight-ahead whodunit and too lacking in imagination to realize its art-film aspirations".

There was some consensus, however.  Seems like mostly positive responses for Sean Penn's adaptation of Jon Krakauer's INTO THE WILD, Jason Reitman's JUNO, Todd Hayne's Dylan biopic I'M NOT THERE; mostly lukewarm for Ang Lee's LUST, CAUTION, Wes Anderson's THE DARJEELING LIMITED and the remake of SLEUTH; and mostly negative for Woody Allen's CASSANDRA'S DREAM and Noah Baumbach's MARGOT AT THE WEDDING.

Lots of Venice and Telluride reports at GreenCine Daily, great reports and interviews from Telluride at SpoutBlog, Kim Voynar's extensive coverage at Cinematical and, of course, the always excellent Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE.

Toronto begins in 2 days.

David Poland Writes on Brian De Palma's Faux-Doc Provocation, Redacted

Late last week, right wing blogs began beating the drum against Brian De Palma's latest film REDACTED, which premiered in Venice and had the nerve to show that very occasionally people do some pretty inhumane things.  I suppose that it's perfectly fine to show corrupt cops or corrupt pols or corrupt and evil school principals, but if you depict an actual event wherein the bad guys happen to be guys wearing the uniform of the United States, you are given an official "I hate the troops" club card. 

But I'm more interested in REDACTED's form, as De Palma shoots on HD video, takes material from the internet (including grisly photos) and generally takes a faux-documentary approach to the story.  It's this that Movie City News' David Poland writes about in a salvo against the film and makes some interesting points comparing De Palma's work to that of Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein, James Longley, Laura Poitras, Andrew Berends and so many other nonfiction filmmakers who have literally risked their lives to get their films to audiences:

If the film didn’t steal so freely from the many quality documentaries that actually put documentarians in harms way to attempt to get a more accurate picture of what is happening on the ground in Iraq, I don’t think I would have found it so grating.

The line for a filmmaker making a simulated doc is very thin. Is there political value in a film that recreates what has already been shown in doc form, but adds 10% of material that polemicizes the reality by creating “simulated reality” that extends what the filmmaker would like to be the truth. If this film was an investigation, on some level, of the issue of where that line lives, I would be happy to watch that. But I would argue that what it does is to create evidence – even though we are watching an admittedly fictional film – to make a case that cannot be made with the actual facts.

Ironically, one of the films that Redacted seems to steal from – a house raid seems to be almost shot for shot the same – is Gunner Palace, which also had young soldiers who were in danger of going adrift and who were constantly facing the dichotomies of this war. The irony is that when the Gunner Palace filmmakers found a lose thread in their documentation of events in the person of a journalist who was taken into custody on the night of one of the house raids, they followed up with an entire documentary, The Prisoner, that told his rather horrifying story. And then, when one of the guards from Abu Gharib showed up at a screening of the film and was willing to go on record, they added more to that documentary until the story was as complete as they could make it.

Seems to me that they made the responsible choice.