One of the lessons of 2009 for me: the worse things get, the better people get, or rather the more I realize how important all the people I work with and play with are to me and to the life I want to live. The past few months have been a strange mixture of 3am panics about the state of the world and moments of sheer joy, and most of these moments of joy have been documentary-related (watching Obama’s inauguration…

Man on Wire is way ahead in the Shooting People Oscar Poll. If you’re a member get voting now. There’s money in it for the lucky winner!

Here’s the list. I’m really pleased that Waltz with Bashir has been nominated in the Best Foreign-Language Film category because if it wins, and I think it should, then two docs can win big Oscars. Best picture The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Frost/Nixon Milk The Reader Slumdog Millionaire Best Director David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon Gus van Sant, Milk Stephen Daldry, The Reader Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire Best supporting actress Amy Adams, Doubt…

Awards are a bit like weddings. You sort of wish that everyone would just get together and throw a party and pay attention to each other just because it’s a nice thing to do but you really have to add a little something extra into the mix to get people to rent hotel rooms and buy toasters and china and, well, I guess my point is that sometimes, although the competition aspect of film award events doesn’t sit so well…

Not bad, not bad. This list often causes some consternation in the doc community as great films are ignored in favor of the obviously not so great but this year’s list includes some really strong films. I, like many others, am disappointed that Margaret Brown’s assured and intelligent The Order of Myths is not on this list but I am really thrilled to see Jeremiah Zagar’s In A Dream on there. I saw In A Dream at the Woodstock Film…

I had a wonderful time up at the Woodstock Film Festival a couple of weeks ago and I feel terrible that I haven’t had a chance to write about it until now. It was great to be up in the country as the leaves started turning and the air grew crisp. I even had a couple of nature epiphanies eating apples off trees and looking at deer in the woods (such a city girl!). Everything smelled of woodsmoke and patchouli…

Jason Kohn gave a great speech when he won the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking at the Cinema Eye Honors last week. He spoke about making Manda Bala “out of anger” after watching Marshall Curry’s Streetfight play to an empty theater at a festival in Sao Paulo. “I was so god damn mad. . . because when these movies don’t get seen you feel like you’re fucking losing, you feel like somebody else is winning and that person is no…

That old “what defines independent” chestnut gets a little tiresome but I read this from Andrew O’Hehir at Salon with interest: “The academy showers its laurels on a film that has made about $63 million in domestic box office, while the big winner at the supposedly independent Spirit Awards has grossed double that amount.” Boring Oscars. Interesting Times.

This could have saved me 2 hours and 59 minutes in front of the telly last night!

It’s always long and a little bit silly but I found last night’s Oscars more exhausting than usual. I liked that Diablo Cody was so genuinely choked up and Marion Cotillard’s speech was lovely but everything else left me a little cold. Although it was nice to see Euro-folk win so many awards. Tilda Swinton is beyond cool (even in that bizarre dress). Amusing titbit from the Guardian Film Blog: “Every year it’s the same thing. The five nominees for…