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
Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

Best actress
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Kate Winslet, The Reader
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Meryl Streep, Doubt

Best supporting actor
Josh Brolin, Milk
Robert Downey Jr, Tropic Thunder
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

Best actor
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Best original screenplay
Frozen River
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Milk
WALL-E

Best adapted screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Best cinematography
Tom Stern, Changeling
Claudio Miranda, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Wally Pfister, The Dark Knight
Chris Menges, Roger Deakins, The Reader
Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire

Achievement in art design
James J Murakami, Gary Fettis, Changeling
Donald Graham Burt, Victor J Zolfo, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Nathan Crowley, Peter Lando, The Dark Knight
Michael Carlin, Rebecca Alleway, The Duchess
Kristi Zea, Debra Schutt, Revolutionary Road

Achievement in visual effects
Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, Craig Barron, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Nick Davis, Chris Corbould, Tim Webber, Paul Franklin, The Dark Knight
John Nelson, Ben Snow, Dan Sudick, Shane Mahan, Iron Man

Achievement in editing
Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Lee Smith, The Dark Knight
Mike Hill, Dan Hanley, Frost/Nixon
Elliot Graham, Milk
Chris Dickens, Slumdog Millionaire

Achievement in costume design
Catherine Martin, Australia
Jacqueline West, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Michael O’Connor, The Duchess
Danny Glicker, Milk
Albert Wolsky, Revolutionary Road

Achievement in makeup
Greg Cannom, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
John Caglione, Jr, Conor O’Sullivan, The Dark Knight
Mike Elizalde, Thom Floutz, Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Best foreign-language film
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)
The Class (France)
Departures (Japan)
Revanche (Austria)
Waltz With Bashir (Israel)

Best documentary feature
Ellen Kuras, Thavisouk Phrasavath, The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Werner Herzog, Henry Kaiser, Encounters at the End of the World
Scott Hamilton Kennedy, The Garden
James Marsh, Simon Chinn, Man On Wire
Tia Lessin, Carl Deal, Trouble the Water

Best animation
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E

Best original song
Down to Earth, WALL-E
Jai Ho, Slumdog Millionaire
O Saya, Slumdog Millionaire

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 Festival in October and was mesmerized and moved by it. I have a British allergy to anything overly earnest but this film manages to be honest and funny and full of the warp and weft of genuinely raw emotion without making me squirm once. I love beautifully made films that tell very personal stories about ordinary people and include all the yukkiness and beauty of life as it is lived. It is hard to pull this off and I think this is a film that succeeds.

You can watch the trailer here:

In A Dream Trailer from Herzliya Films on Vimeo.

Here’s the list:

At the Death House Door
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
Encounters at the End of the World
Fuel
The Garden
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
I.O.U.S.A.
In a Dream
Made in America
Man on Wire
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Standard Operating Procedure
They Killed Sister Dorothy
Trouble the Water

Congrats to everyone involved! And New Yorkers: The Betrayal opens at the IFC Center on Friday, November 21st. This is a tour de force collaboration between Ellen Kuras, cinematographer for directors like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, and Laotian-American activist Thavisouk Phrasavath and it took an incredible 20 years to make. Don’t miss this opportunity to see it on a big screen.

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 best foreign language film and best documentary are four war movies and one about dance.”

I am pleased for Alex Gibney and Taxi to the Dark Side even though I put No End in Sight on my ballot. I think they’re both excellent documentaries but Gibney is a smart, experienced director and deserves his Oscar.

There’s so much going on at the moment I feel rather gleefully overwhelmed. The Spirit Awards will be broadcast live on IFC tomorrow at 5pmET but I’m also going to be watching a webcast of the red carpet on IFC.com at 2.30pmET with commentary from SXSW’s Matt Dentler and IFC’s Alison Willmore.

And then of course on Sunday there’s some Oscar something or other happening. I’m going to find a friend with a bigger TV than mine and make some careless financial bets. It makes it more fun when “stakes is high.”

On a smaller scale but no less enjoyable, earlier in the week I went to the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series night that Michael Tully guest-curated with aplomb. He chose some films that I already know and love (The Zellner’s Foxy and the Weight of the World and the Duplass’s The Intervention) but it’s always a pleasure to watch old favorites with an audience. I finally got a chance to see Matthew Lessner’s clever and rather heartbreaking By Modern Measure and Josh Safdie’s beautiful We’re Going to the Zoo – and I reveled in the wonderful Weekend by Henrik Andersson, a film that makes me want to move to Scandinavia and wear a lot of beige. Check out upcoming screenings from the series – Barbes is always a fun place to drink beer and watch films on a Monday night.

On Tuesday I moderated an IFP Industry Connect panel on alternative distribution options which was very useful for me as I’m currently writing an article on that very subject. There was healthy debate amongst the panelists who brought a wealth of experience working on everything from: new models for theatrical (IFC Films with their day and date strategy), aggregating for iTunes (New Video), digital cinema ventures (Emerging Cinema), new web fundraising strategies (IndieGoGo), and online film sites (IndiePix). I’ll post more feedback in here shortly as the article comes together. It’s a subject I have been thinking about somewhat obsessively of late – for now there’s more discussion on this on the TOOLS blog.

Enjoy the film-tastic weekend!

Some people want to do the trailer voice. You know the one I mean, that impossibly deep, always slightly hilarious voice saying stupid things like: “In a world without love, without hope, without chocolate, one man never gave up.” I never wanted to do the trailer voice but I did want to make montages. I love me a good montage. They always make me goose-bumpy even if they’re awful. I’m going to do a blog post one of these days that is just “montages I have known and loved.” Until then this piece from MTV will have to do. MTV Movies editor Josh Horowitz gets an Oscar wish granted by Kurt Loder:

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

Here’s the shortlist. AJ Schnack has more information on each film on his blog including some robust criticism of the list that I find myself agreeing with. I was really disappointed that films like Billy The Kid, We Are Together, Manda Bala, and The King of Kong didn’t make the list. The King of Kong is one of the funniest and most skillfully constructed documentaries I have seen in a long time and I wish that films like this would get more recognition just for being great films and telling great stories.

“Autism: The Musical,” directed by Tricia Regan

“Body of War,” directed by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro

“For The Bible Tells Me So,” directed by Daniel G. Karslake

“Lake of Fire,” directed by Tony Kaye

“Nanking,” directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman

“No End in Sight,” directed by Charles Ferguson

“Operation Homecoming – Writing the Wartime Experience,” directed by Richard Robbins

“The Price of Sugar,” directed by Bill Haney

“Please Vote For Me,” directed by Wejun Chen

“A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman,” directed by Peter Raymont

“The Rape of Europa,” directed by Richard Berge and Bonni Cohen

“Sicko,” directed by Michael Moore

“Taxi to the Dark Side,” directed by Alex Gibney

“War/Dance,” directed b Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine

“White Light/Black Rain,” directed by Steven Okazaki

UPDATE: More docs are coming to mind. What about Kurt Cobain About a Son for a spot of innovation and music just for change or In the Shadow of the Moon? I haven’t seen In The Shadow of the Moon yet but it has space and astronauts in it for gawds sake! Any one else have thoughts on what’s missing?

The Academy has changed the rules for documentaries for the 81st Awards (ie. for the Oscars taking place in 2009), dropping the requirement for a multi-city rollout. Instead docs will now have to screen for 7 days in BOTH Los Angeles County and the Borough of Manhattan, rather than in one or the other as the rules stand now.

Films that reach the semifinal round of voting will no longer be required to provide two film prints to the Academy but will be able to submit in either film or digital format, complying with rigorous Digital Cinema standards.

Read the new rules here:

http://www.oscars.org/81academyawards/rules/rule12.html

And the press release here:

http://www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2007/07.10.09a.html