One Category at a Time: Documentary

Last year's decision to send out screeners of the nominated docs and allow the entire Academy to vote on them made it a pretty easy category to predict. The dominance of Searching for Sugar Man with the guilds was further bolstered by the fact that it was clearly the nominee with the widest appeal, and would obviously do better with a larger voting pool. This year's race, however, is more up in the air. No one documentary has dominated industry precursors, and the presumed popular favourite might suffer from similarities to last year's winner.

Quick take on The Wind Rises and other late season catch-ups

It's getting down to the wire for me to see all of this year's nominated feature films. Not my fault! I swear! It's these damn late/limited releases making it nearly impossible for me to see everything in time. Thankfully, new technologies such as iTunes and Netflix and the like have granted me access to all the years nominated documentaries and some of the foreign films too. However, for some titles I've had to get real creative (and rely on my high school French), while for others I've simply had to wait for them to finally see the light of day. I finally had the opportunity to see what all the fuss is about The Wind Rises, and if I'm lucky, I'll be able to catch Omar the day before the Oscars.

For now, here are some capsule reviews from late-breaking docs and miscellaneous films that I simply haven't had the time to write about:

The Wind Rises

The life and times of Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Horishoki – who designed the deadly Zeros that Japan would use in WWII – is brought to life by the gifted hands of master animator Hayao Miyazaki, which may (or may not) be his final feature film. Beyond its linear biopic format, Miyazaki's [non]swansong is an artful ode to the winds of artistic inspiration and a poignant reminder that even products of impassioned creative genius can be warped for sinister purposes. Though conspicuously lacking in the fanciful whimsy and fantastical world-building on which Miyazaki has built his auteur status (although he still plies his visual imagination to Jiro's vivid dream sequences), this is perhaps his most mature work to date, eschewing the childlike worldview of his previous films and adopting a more adult writing style. However, that doesn't change the fact that what we're watching is still a straightforward biopic about a man who may be interesting as a research curiosity, but is pretty flat as a screen character. Unlike other Miyazaki films I've treasured over the years, this one actually had me checking my watch at various points throughout. The picture is a thing of beauty yes (and a feast for the ears as Joe Hisaishi's score is one of the year's best), but it hasn't the story to match.

*** out of ****

MPSE honours Gravity, Captain Phillips

The Motion Picture Sound Editors spread the wealth last night, handing no more than one award to any film in contention, but the main prize of Best Sound Effects and Foley (which correlates most closely to the Academy's Sound Editing award) went to Gravity. Captain Phillips picked up a win as well for its ADR, but none of the other prize winners are up for the Oscar. Read the list after the cut.

Writers Guild nominations

Hot on the heals of yesterday's PGA announcement, the WGA has chimed in with their selections for the year's best screenplays... at least those that were eligible. It rankles every year that a number of the most highly touted films of the year are not qualified for the guild's honour, and this year's list of ineligibilities include likely Oscar nominees 12 Years a Slave and Philomena, among others.

Full list of nominees (and comments) after the cut.