Thursday, March 4, 2010

OSCAR DEATH RACE PART REAL TALK



Best Documentary Feature

- Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land - dir. Anders Østergaard
- The Cove - dir. Louie Psihoyos
- Food, Inc. - dir. Robert Kenner
- The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers - dir. Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
- Which Way Home - dir. Rebecca Cammisa

Who Will Win?: In many of the smaller categories it's foolish to pick a movie because it's the most popular or well known or has momentum. However, this is the category that only a few years ago honored March of the Penguins, so, lacking anything super-topical or about the Holocaust, I'm going to pick The Cove, which has won a few precursors and (whatever one says about its credentials as a Documentary) is pretty exciting. Everybody loves dolphins, right?

Best Documentary Short

- China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province - dir. Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill
- The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner - dir. Daniel Junge
- The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant - dir. Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
- Królik po berlinsku (Rabbit a la Berlin) - dir. Bartosz Konopka
- Music by Prudence - dir. Roger Ross Williams

Who Will Win?: Maybe one of these is a completely virtuosic example of documentary filmmaking, but I have nothing to go by except for subject matter. And while the death count of China's Unnatural Disaster might sway voters, I'd bet on the fact that if the Recession was enough to carry Up in the Air to Oscar Nominations and some kind of supposed relevance, I'm going to bet on it taking the day here too. That's The Last Truck, yall.

No comments: