November 19, 2004
Stupid Oscars
The Academy has released a list of the documentaries in competition for the Best Documentary Feature award. Typical of a category that has historically been a mess, they left out some of the best docs of the year. No Tarnation, the best documentary, and best film, to be released yet this year. No Control Room, the best traditional documentary released this year, and one of the best films of the year. No The Corporation, a thoughtful and compelling documentary about how corporations are psychotic. Some of it might be the intricate rules governing the category, which have shut out a fair share of great films. A lot of it, though, is the documentary branch's legendary bad taste.
The Oscars have a history of screwing up the documentary category. Those three films join Hearts of Darkness, Brother's Keeper, Truth or Dare, and Hoop Dreams on the list of documentaries that were unjustly ignored by the Oscars (not to mention all of Erroll Morris's films until The Fog of War). And let's not forget that the winner of the 1966 Best Documentary award was The War Game, which could only be a documentary if the Russians had actually launched a nuclear attack on Great Britain.
This was the best year for documentaries in a long time. Pundits are hailing the birth of new age of documentaries when they are finally accepted by mass audiences (but I'm still not holding my breath). As usual, the Oscars missed out. I haven't seen the films on the shortlist, but I doubt that there are five of them better than Tarnation or Control Room.
Posted by mike, November 19, 2004 10:32 AMI'm sad about Control Room being left off. I was mesmerized by it.
That Fuck the South site is hilarious. I know I shouldn't have enjoyed it, but I did, dammit!
Posted by: Amy at November 19, 2004 1:38 PMAre any of them Holocaust documentaries? It wouldn't be the Oscars without a Holocaust documentary!
I can't really comment on the choices themselves. I haven't seen any of them. Even if I saw the ones you did, I don't know which ones on their list don't belong. I'll have to take your word for it! (And I do!)
Posted by: shane at November 19, 2004 4:05 PMI know this is naive, but after last year I thought they might get their shit together. What a complete bunch of bastards. I have only seen Super Size Me on the list. They are showing Touching the Void on PBS very soon. I'll check that out. From what I hear it's incredible. I've heard that Riding Giants is amazing, also. How the hell Fahrenheit 9/11 isn't on the list I'll never know. I thought for sure that would get a nomination. I should have known better. They hate docs that make money. The one I'm dying to see is Tarnation. If Mike says it's brilliant it's brilliant. Control Room, though. My God. They must be out of their fucking minds not nominating that movie. Year after year the nominations for documentary hurt my feelings. And now that Mike and I are more involved with the process it's starting to feel personal. I have a feeling that in the next couple of years it's going to be devestating to me. I think the critics need to have their own doc awards because these idiots make me sick.
Posted by: Shawn at November 19, 2004 10:39 PMMichael Moore decided not to put Fahrenheit 9/11 in competition for the documentary award because he wants Best Picture, and he thought (correctly) that inclusion in the doc category would make people less willing to vote for it for the big one.
One good thing is that Oscar-nominated footage (well, sort of) is now in Axis of Evil. The directors of the Howard Zinn movie are friends of Carmine's, and they gave us the Howard Zinn and Daniel Ellsburg footage to use in Axis.
Posted by: mike at November 20, 2004 11:36 AM