National Film Registry. Have You Seen These Titles?

Porgy & Bess, in which Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge both lipsynched is one of the 25 inductees.The film is rarely screened, not all that well and regarded but badly in need of restoration. Is that what did it?Each year I read the press release list of the films admitted to the National Film Registry and promptly forget them. I guess I've never absorbed just what this does for the films beyond being an obviously prestigious honor. So this year rather than doing the usual read the titles and forget, I stopped, actually took a breath (a rarity on the web), wondered, and googled a bit. I stopped being lazy about it so you don't have to be either. I didn't just list titles below but actual information!

However I am still a bit confused as what the honor actually means beyond admittance into the Library of Congress. If this meant government funding to restore or preserve the films or if it meant an automatic transfer to each new medium that surfaces (VHS to DVD to Blu Ray to whatever is next) so that that film in question never disappears it would be a truly astounding honor. But it doesn't mean this.  The National Film Preservation Board which is connected to the National Film Registry  does not own the rights and can thus not distribute the films. The honor is also no guarantee of preservation. Film preservation is still a privately funded matter. Hollywood as a whole is fairly disinterested in its own history (except to mine it for remakes) and US politics has always been depressingly anti-arts funding. (Thank the Right Wing of the country for that.)

Here are the 25 new inductees in chronological order of creation. I am ashamed at how few of the I've seen. Should we watch them together?

• The Cry Of The Children (George Nichols, 1912) a short film about child labor
• A Cure for Pokeritis (Laurence Trimble, 1912) a short slapstick comedy
• The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) another Chaplin film for the Registry
• The Iron Horse (1924) a long western starring George O'Brien of Sunrise fame.
• Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies (1930s and 1940s) I assume this is the famous tap dancers?

The Nicholas Brothers

Beloved orphan fawns, globally famous serial killers, and remarkable actress faces, and more after the jump... How many have you seen?

Click to read more ...

Oscar News: 15 Documentary Finalists. Major Snubs Are Mandatory.

The Academy have announced their finalists in the Best Documentary Oscar category. Guess what isn't it the running anymore: Senna, The Interrupters, Page One: Inside the New York Times, and The Carrier! And that's just the biggies off the top of my head without research.  Amir was just pontificating about Senna's Oscar hopes and he's hardly that movies only über fan. People will be up in arms. I suppose it wouldn't be the Best Documentary Feature, that storied and oft-controversial category, without these anger-making decisions. Remember when Grizzly Man got the boot? I know, right? Unthinkable though that still is...

The finalists are...

• Battle for Brooklyn (RUMER Inc.) 
• Bill Cunningham New York (First Thought Films)
• Buck (Cedar Creek Productions) 
• Hell and Back Again (Roast Beef Productions Limited)
• If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Marshall Curry Productions, LLC)
• Jane's Journey (NEOS Film GmbH & Co. KG)
• The Loving Story (Augusta Films)
• Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (@radical.media)
• Pina (Neue Road Movies GmbH)
• Project Nim (Red Box Films)
• Semper Fi: Always Faithful (Tied to the Tracks Films, Inc.)
• Sing Your Song (S2BN Belafonte Productions, LLC)
• Undefeated (Spitfire Pictures)
• Under Fire: Journalists in Combat (JUF Pictures, Inc.)
• We Were Here (Weissman Projects, LLC)

The highest profile films here are Buck, Pina (also eligible in Foreign Film), Project Nim, and Paradise Lose 3: Purgatory... but that's almost a whole shortlist in and of itself so expect more drama ahead.

Who are you rooting for and which snub makes you crazazy? 

Can Documentaries Break Free From Their Own Category?

Amir here.  When it comes to the Oscars, one of the things I love to complain about each year is the Foreign Language category. That’s hardly a surprise since the category gets so much flak from everyone, but my concern this time is about something more specific than the usual “shocking” snubs.

Looking over past lists of nominees, you'll notice that the Foreign Language Film category has failed to showcase a documentary before. Like... EVER! (Unless you count Waltz With Bashir, which some do and some don't). The reverse has happened many times: the documentary branch has nominated and awarded foreign documentaries.

To be fair to the Academy, not many documentaries are submitted to begin with in foreign film. But even when they are submitted and happen to be as deserving as say, Finland’s Steam of Life in 2010, they still get ignored. So I did a little research and came to the conclusion that this problem is not really limited to the foreign category. Documentaries have always had a hard time breaking out of their box. Admittedly, the voters’ hands are tied when it comes to some categories (acting, costume design, etcetera.) but there’s no reasonable explanation for the absence of documentaries in editing, cinematography and even the sound categories.

Which brings me to my main point: the Academy has at least four shots at righting this wrong come January. It’s highly unlikely that any of these nominations will come to fruition but staying silent about them won’t help the cause, so here we go: these are my suggestions for documentary nominations in non-documentary categories. From my mouth to cinema god’s ears.   

Pina (Foreign Film Category)
Several pundits (including Nathaniel) think the German entry has what it takes to make it to the top five. I’m not as high on the film as some critics seem to be, but considering what a delightful and remarkably unique nomination this would be should it happen, I can fully get behind it.

Jose & Pilar (Foreign Film Category)
Not quite as buzzy but even more deserving than the German submission is this Portuguese gem. This documentary is about one of my personal favourite writers, the Nobel Prize winning Jose Saramago, in the last years of his life with his wife Pilar. The film is rooted in Saramago’s ideology but also steps away to observe him from an external perspective. It succeeds both as an intimate portrayal of love between an older couple, and as a compelling character study of a man whose life is an endless source of fascinating political and literary ideas. I’ve only seen 12 of the submissions so far, but I have a hard time believing there are five better films among the rest. Nevertheless, I won’t get my hopes up. When there are films about children and WWII available to Oscar voters, what are Saramago’s chances?

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Cinematography)
Herzog’s film and Pina are the only two films I've seen recently that had me thinking “I’m glad I saw that in 3D” when exiting the theatre. In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Peter Zeitlinger’s cinematography brings Chauvet Cave to the big screen without losing any of its magic. Zeitlinger’s poetic vision conveys the experience of visiting the cave and etches an array of mesmerizing images in our minds. 

Senna (Editing)
Is there a chance of this happening? If Senna is nominated in the best documentary category, that will be a beautiful achievement, but Chris King SO deserves a nomination all his one. Snubbed just last year for his intricate work on Exit through the Gift Shop, he’s back with an explosive blend of F1 action and personal drama. Transitioning between racing footage, family videos and adding only sound clips (without the talking heads) Senna is an eclectic mix that gets our adrenaline going but leaves us in tears at the end. It owes so much to King’s editing. It’s been 17 years since the Editor's branch nominated Hoop Dreams and it’s about time they embraced another documentary film.

Your turn! Which documentaries would you like to see nominated? Do you believe in miracles that it could happen for any of them in an extra category?

"the human head weighs 8 lbs"

<--- Blog Stage Awwww, tiny cute person Jonathan Lipnicki (Jerry Maguire) is all grown up. Just celebrated his 21st birthday.
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Clutch Magazine Occupy Hollywood
Aint It Cool Looks like it's more crime dramas for director Ben Affleck rather than another filmed version of Stephen King's The Stand.
Fashion Telegraph a clothing line based on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? Make it stop! I think Joanna at Pajiba said it best when she said... 

I’ve always wanted to dress as a mentally unstable, violent victim of abuse."

Animation Kung Fu Panda becomes an animated TV series next month. 
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Indie Wire has a list of the Cinema Eye nominees, honoring documentary filmmaking the top category goes like so.

The Arbor (Clio Barnard)
Senna (Asif Kapadia)
Project NIM (James Marsh)
Position Among the Stars (Leonard Retel Heimrich)
Nostalgia For the Light (Patricio Guzmán) 
The Interrupters (Steve James) 

 I keep meaning to write about The Arbor. So fascinatingly heavy and interesting.

Even the Blind Film Critic knows that Tom Cruise isn't quite right visually to play "Jack Reacher", his upcoming franchise role...

In Ye Olden Times when Tom Cruise used to get cast in roles he wasn't right for -- hi, Lestat! -- it could easily be blamed on his #1 position in Hollywood's star structure. But what's the excuse now? Hmmmm...

'Little Climber'

As a child I loved to climb everywhere. I'll let the psychiatrists decide why. Maybe I wanted to escape my time? Maybe I wanted to see the world from a different perspective? I was an explorer at heart? Who knows and who cares."