Editor’s note: Welcome to the twenty-ninth of a 33-part series dissecting the 82nd Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Daniel Getahun of Getafilm.

If there is a common thread among the (rather surprising) five nominees for Best Documentary Feature this year, it is that they herald the maturation of the “agit-doc”, or activist documentary. Their purpose is not necessarily to tell a story in the traditional documentary filmmaking style, but to make you mad, call you to action, and encourage you to tell all of your friends that they just have to see “the dolphin movie”.

If you’re picking up on the sarcasm in my voice, forgive me - it’s just that the runaway best documentary of the year, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, is not among this group of five. It’s as if voters let their political compasses guide them above everything else this year; during these challenging times it’s evident that we want to get mad, get even, and get to work about this social issue or that social issue. In any case, let’s take a look at the nominees, in order of most likely to least likely to win:

The Cove - If The Cove had lost any momentum as the frontrunner in this category over the last few months, last weeks’ horrific Sea World accident must be considered a bittersweet endorsement. Cleverly threading animal rights, dolphin intelligence, Japanese cultural quirks, international politics, and food safety into a slick, action-packed, one-sided argument with all the flair of a lawyer’s opening statement, The Cove also features the bloodiest scene among all of the nominees. If it bleeds, it leads, and I mean that literally in this case. Mark it on your Oscar pool ballot with confidence.

Food, Inc. - Were it not for the last decade of food activism, from Super Size Me to the organic/slow food movements to Fast Food Nation to “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, this film would have made a much larger impact on the cultural landscape in 2009. Of course, were it not for those things I mentioned this film wouldn’t exist in the first place. In other words, it’s a nice summary of everything that you’ve already been told is wrong with the American food industry. Serves as a nice reminder but doesn’t bring much new to the dinner table, as it were. A win may depend on whether the many celebrities who comprise AMPAS have chosen food safety as their cause du jour.

Burma VJ - Splashing onto the scene at Sundance just over a year ago, Burma VJ earned raves from critics and audiences on its limited festival tour in 2009. It is an absorbing and shocking fly-on-the-wall look (shot entirely by undercover reporters) at the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007, in which Buddhist monks led a peaceful series of protests against the ruthless Burmese government. Burma VJ is reminiscent of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (which focused on an attempted coup against Hugo Chavez), but the stakes are much higher here and the sick feeling you have afterward will last much longer.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers - Filling the token annual role of “Documentary Nominee with an Outrageously Long Name”, The Most Dangerous Man is also the only nominee about the American war machine (there were three nominees in 2007 alone). Daniel Ellsberg was a former Pentagon insider who covertly smuggled top-secret Pentagon files to the media that outlined how U.S. presidents had lied about their war plans for nearly two decades. Sounds like a conspiracy theorist’s worst nightmare come true, right? I have not seen it but it is slated for a theatrical release next month and a broadcast on PBS later this year.

Which Way Home - The heavy underdog in this group, Which Way Home sounds like the documentary version of last year’s underrated Sin Nombre or 2008’s forgettable Under the Same Moon. The film, about children who make the perilous train journey alone through Mexico on the way to an ostensibly “better life” in the United States, was not released theatrically (according to my researched) and did not earn even one nomination of any kind aside from this nod for Oscar and a Spirit Award nomination (where it will go up against the likes of Food, Inc. and Anvil!). It’s unlikely that many voters have seen it and a nomination may be considered recognition enough for this one. Or, who knows, maybe it will come out of nowhere as the winner if the votes for the favorites are evenly split.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the eighteenth of a 24-part series dissecting the 81st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Daniel of Getafilm.

If 2007 was considered one of the strongest years for feature films in nearly a decade, 2008 deserves the same recognition for its incredibly impressive lineup of documentaries. Having seen upwards of 20 of them, it was pretty hard for me to narrow down a personal list of the Best Documentaries of 2008, so I can imagine how difficult it must have been for AMPAS to eventually choose five nominees for Best Documentary Feature.

I only saw four of the five last year, and of those only three landed on my own list - but this isn’t about my picks, it’s about the winning picks. And in this case, the race has been over for more than a year. Unless Academy voters have grown a conscience about Hurricane Katrina in the last few months and come down from their adrenaline high, Man on Wire will continue a winning streak that extends back to January of 2008, when it won the “World Cinema – Documentary” prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

But as a formality, let’s take a look at all of the nominees, in alphabetical order:

The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) – My memory is a little foggy of this one since it’s been almost a year since I saw it, but know this much: few people have had as rough a life as Thavi Phrasavath, and even fewer have bounced back with such impressive resilience. After fleeing Laos as a teen when the U.S. betrayed its ally in the Vietnam War, Thavi’s family was given “refuge” in the urban jungle of Brooklyn, NY (which in the early 80’s was not yet, it should be noted, a gentrified hipster enclave). Soon after, another betrayal within the family left Thavi as a confused, frustrated young man who felt abandoned by both his old country and his new country.

It was during this tumultuous time – 1985, to be exact – that a young filmmaker named Ellen Kuras would discover Thavi and begin filming his daily life as part of a grad school project. Twenty-three years later, the film is complete, even if the story is not. Kuras, whose name may be familiar to people from her work as a cinematographer (He Got Game, Blow, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind), reportedly has a great reputation in Hollywood. Will it be enough to earn her an Oscar as a first-time nominee? It would be a great story, but a win would still be a major upset considering that the film has not yet seen a wide release.

Encounters at the End of the World – Best seen on a massive, sprawling screen, this love letter to Antarctica (and, believe it or not, Roger Ebert) is part “Planet Earth” and part, well, Werner Herzog (if you’ve seen enough of his films you know he defies categorization). The brilliance of Encounters, aside from the technical aspects and jaw-dropping underwater cinematography, is that Herzog seamlessly blends an examination of the science-fiction creatures living at the bottom of the earth with an examination of the science-obsessed nerds sharing the ice with them. It’s like a trip to the zoo in winter, but there are people on display here as well.

The chance for a win here is questionable considering the film wasn’t universally considered a success, but Herzog is greatly admired and his demographic is right in the sweet spot of the Academy voting block. Plus, there are no doubt some people still sore that his 2005 acclaimed documentary Grizzly Man was ruled ineligible a few years ago. This could be a chance at redemption, which the Academy loves to do across all categories (Scorsese’s win, Denzel Washington’s win, etc.).

The Garden – The only nominee I haven’t seen and the one that deserves the award for Most Boring Title, if nothing else. It’s centered around the legal battle that resulted from the City of Los Angeles selling a 14-acre piece of land in South Central that had been developed into a thriving urban farm. The trailer makes it look like a gripping legal thriller in the style of Michael Clayton, but I’m not buying it. Few people have even seen this film (try to find reviews of it), but then again it’s probably a bigger story in L.A., where much of the Academy resides, than anywhere else. Maybe some hometown love? Doubtful, so this remains the longshot.

Man on Wire – Easily the most popular documentary since An Inconvenient Truth, this has been the front-runner for a solid 12 months, and it landed on many critics’ and bloggers’ Top 10 lists (mine included, but only #4 in the doc list). Heavily using reenactments and archival footage, it retells the riveting story of Philippe Petit’s historic high wire walk between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. The fact that Petit is interviewed throughout the film in the present day somehow doesn’t register when you see him walking thousands of feet in the air – how did this person not die? Even if Man on Wire didn’t affect me on a deeply emotional level, I can appreciate that the story of Petit’s feat is completely engrossing, and a real testament to the best of the human spirit in all of us. I’ll be shocked if James Marsh is not holding an Oscar statuette on Sunday night.

Trouble the Water – Winner of the “Documentary” prize at Sundance in 2008 (alongside Man on Wire, which as I mentioned took home the “World Cinema – Documentary” prize), Trouble the Water represents not one, but two major themes that have comprised several recent documentaries: 1.) it’s not actually what you think it’s about, which in this case is Hurricane Katrina (the same can be said for Surfwise and Blindsight); and 2.) the completed film didn’t resemble what the filmmakers originally set out to make (Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father this year and My Kid Could Paint That last year).

So what it is about? Well, a lot of things, but primarily the daily lives of individuals in the lower economic classes of America. The disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina is simply the lens through which this indictment is made clear - these class differences were around long before Katrina, and they’ll be around long after her. But that doesn’t stop Kimberly and Scott Roberts, the subjects of the film, from determinedly bettering themselves and their community. It’s depressing and inspiring at the same time, and among these five nominees it would likely receive my personal vote. I think its chances of beating Man on Wire are slim, but still better than the other nominees.

Final Prediction: Man on Wire

P.S. You might remember I predicted No End in Sight to win last year. It didn’t.

Name: Daniel
Site: Getafilm

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $324M
2. The Dark Knight, $313M
3. Iron Man, $291M
4. WALL-E, $274M
5. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, $253M
6. Hancock, $245M
7. Get Smart, $212M
8. Sex and the City: The Movie, $196M
9. Speed Racer, $164M
10. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, $149M

Guaranteed Flop: Kung Fu Panda - $68m.

Rip Van Winkle Hit (sleeper): Sex and the City: The Movie.

Three Movies I’m Most Looking Forward To:
- The Dark Knight (Ledger buzz and great franchise).
- Indy 4 (Oh, no reason…).
- Hancock (Back on the Smith train after I Am Legend).

Editor’s note: Welcome to the fourteenth of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Daniel of Getafilm.

The average movie-goer is seeking entertainment and/or artistry from their two hour venture, not insight and information. Nevertheless, the documentary feature has been an increasingly popular fixture in movie theaters across the country, in part thanks to Michael Moore, in part thanks to daring filmmakers exposing scandalous stories in recent years, and in part, hopefully, to an increasingly interested public. It may surprise you, then, to learn that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has been way ahead of the curve, honoring documentary features since 1942. This recognition is not without controversy - many people would like to see the category removed all together, and it doesn’t help that Hoop Dreams, generally regarded as one of the greatest documentaries ever made (perhaps the best, in my opinion), was completely ignored by the Academy in 1994. In recent years, new rules have been instituted. For example, a feature is no longer eligible if it is composed entirely of archival footage, which is why 2005’s chilling Grizzly Man was missing from the list of nominees. Still no excuse for Hoop Dreams…

Before I preview the 2008 nominees, I’ll just list a few others that stood out last year but won’t be heard about on February 24. I won’t try to convince you now of the importance of documentaries, but if you agree that they are enriching, add these to your Netflix queue: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Manufactured Landscapes, In the Shadow of the Moon, The Devil Came on Horseback, God Grew Tired of Us, Nanking, Manda Bala, and My Kid Could Paint That.

On to the 2008 Best Documentary Feature nominees, in alphabetical order:

No End in Sight, directed by Charles Ferguson: Based on the title alone, you can get a sense of both the topic and slant of this sharply arranged analysis of the U.S occupation in Iraq. Charles Ferguson was incredibly successful at gaining access and interviews from top administration officials, few of whom are shy about admitting the shocking lack of a plan for life after Saddam Hussein. An excellent documentary, in large part because it has a singular, unstraying focus on the first month after the fall of Saddam’s regime.

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, directed by Richard Robbins: The only one of the nominees I haven’t seen, Operation Homecoming features reenactments and animation of the Iraq war experience, along with soldier interviews and readings of actual letters by a host of famous Hollywood actors. The trailer paints a disturbing picture, but also tells me this is an interesting, provocative way of telling these stories.

Sicko, directed by Michael Moore: His breakthrough documentary Roger and Me (ignored by the Academy) showed that Michael Moore is really good at making you not like certain people, and making those certain people know that you don’t like them. Bowling for Columbine (for which he won Oscar) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (the highest-grossing doc of all time) established him as a unabashed critic of not only George Bush, but also logical reasoning. Sicko is his most extreme feature because of the incredibly poor case he makes against health care in the U.S. The French go on vacation! Whaaaa…? British doctors drive really nice cars - and are happy! Imagine that….Canadians (his favorite) only have to wait a half hour in the emergency room! Can’t be…Finally, Moore humbly finishes the movie by telling of his $12,000 donation to one of his critics, and then rubbing all of our faces in it with his creepy voice-overs. Exactly what new insight was I supposed to get out of this again?

Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney: Also nominated in 2005, for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Gibney is known for taking on larger-than-life subjects. In this case, the U.S. military and its use of torture in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. Horrific stories (including that of murdered Afghan taxi driver Diliwar - hence the title) are framed by interviews with U.S. military personnel, psychology experts, journalists, and Gibney’s own narration. Plenty of smirking clips of Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney are featured, along with a disturbing number of graphic images. It’s no secret that Gibney is an opponent of torture, so look elsewhere if you’re seeking an unbiased opinion - which of course would be almost impossible with a subject like this.

War Dance (War/Dance), directed by Andrea Nix and Sean Fine: Certainly the most encouraging of the five nominees this year, War Dance tells the story of a group of Ugandan school children preparing to compete in the national music festival. From their war-torn region of the country, these extremely likable kids are subject to humiliation and low expectations from their competitors. Will the underdog come from behind and win? Well you can’t write documentaries (unless you’re Michael Moore), but sometimes life seems too good to be true. But not always, and not always in the way you expect. Watch and be inspired.

Tough prediction here. Iraq has been all over the screen this last year, possibly to the point of viewer exhaustion. For that reason, three of these nominees may potentially cannibalize each other. On the other hand, are Academy members really going to give Michael Moore another soapbox opportunity? If he wins, it will be for his weakest work to date. This leaves War Dance, which, while captivating and uplifting (like 2004’s winner, Born Into Brothels), just might not be “relevant” enough to pull off the win. Sadly, most people don’t even know where Uganda is, let alone care about its war-orphaned children. In contrast, last year’s winner, An Inconvenient Truth, basically changed the whole discussion on climate change, so voters may hope a similar phenomenon happens again this year. This brings us back to the Iraq trio. If none of the three win, that would be the second 0/3 year in a row, meaning 6 out of the last 10 documentary nominees have focused on the war, and none of them have won. I just don’t think that’s going to happen, but I’ve been wrong many times before. The strongest of these three, in my opinion, was No End in Sight, and I think it will ultimately end up taking the top prize. The longest shot is Operation Homecoming, but each of the other three have had bursts of momentum recently, so who knows…

URL: http://getafilm.blogspot.com

Site Name: Getafilm

What is the main focus of your site (reviews, editorials, news, lists, etc.)?
I’m still trying to figure that out, I think. Mostly reviews and lists from what you mention, maybe some special editorials from time to time. Like most of us living outside of L.A., I doubt I’ll be breaking any major news, so probably best to leave that to the insiders.

What are your blogging goals, personally and/or professionally? In other words, what, if anything, are you trying to get out your blog?
Personally, to keep a record of the many movies I see (with a grade that I can qualify), offer any unique thoughts I might have to the movie blogosphere, and gain new insights from the thousands of us that are already doing this. Professionally, - wait a minute, people do this professionally?

Do you prefer an interactive ‘community’ for your blog or are you the teacher and your readers are the students?
I actually was a middle school teacher for a few years - no need to recreate that environment here. Getting into this has been pretty humbling, so I’m definitely not claiming any expertise. I love an interactive, lively community, especially with people who are interested in and knowledgeable about movies. Has anyone said otherwise?

How long have you been movie blogging for, and how frequent do you post updates to your site?
September 2007. I don’t foresee ever being able or willing to post daily or hourly, but I try not to go more than 3-4 days between posting. It all depends on the time of the year and how busy the rest of my life and work is. Of course, I also have to spend some time actually at the movies.

Name up to three of your favorite movies (and no more).
I’ll do one to make things simple, as long as I can qualify it. The Power of One. It’s not the best movie ever made or anything - not even close. But it’s the first movie that, when I was an adolescent boy, grabbed me emotionally and intellectually, and nothing’s been the same since.

How did you hear about the LAMB?
Ran across Blog Cabins somehow, and here I am.

Any additional comments.
This LAMB project is great - nice work, really. Hope it continues to grow…