The Academy's documentary branch has a tendency to do this. Despite changes to their voting procedures that were supposedly to the benefit of high profile docs, buzzed-about titles such as
West of Memphis,
The Central Park Five (which just one the NYFCC award today), and
The Queen of Versailles (which I've seen and thought was a very good bet) were knocked out of the running early. The fifteen lucky docs that will fight it out for five nominations are:
Ai Weiwei: Never
Sorry
Bully
Chasing Ice
Detropia
Ethel
5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
The House I Live In
How to Survive a Plague
The Imposter
The Invisible War
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House
of God
Searching for Sugar Man
This is Not a Film
The Waiting Room
