One Category at a Time: Documentary

Last year saw a tightly contested race for Best Documentary that ultimately left me guessing randomly as to which doc would win. I got it wrong, of course. It's always been tricky to anticipate which way the relatively small group of voters who attend the screenings will lean, but we don't have to worry about that this year.

A quietly announced by somewhat significant rule change occurred shortly after nominations landed: screeners will be sent out to Academy members containing the nominees for Animated Short, Live-Action Short, and Documentary Feature. Now the entire membership is allowed to vote on these categories.

This larger sample size seems like it should benefit populist fare, and that could all but seal the deal for the category's frontrunner.

My Award nominations: Documentary

As is the case every year, I never get to see as many documentaries as I should like. This shortlist is more representative of what docs I did manage to see, rather than what I consider the best. If I catch up with better ones at some point down the road I'll probably amend this list retroactively, but for now, my nominees for Best Documentary are:

Writers Guild nominees

The WGA nominees need always be taken with a grain of salt. They're the most exclusively insular of the guilds, only qualifying guild signatories for their awards, so several Oscar-bound screenplays are deemed ineligible every year. So don't take the absence of Django Unchained, Amour, and Beasts of the Southern Wild as particularly bad omens for their chances with the Academy. They weren't in the running with this guild, along with several others.

For the ten screenplays that did make it, it's a solid crop all around.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Flight, Written by John Gatins
Looper, Written by Rian Johnson
The Master, Written by Paul Thomas Anderson
Moonrise Kingdom, Written by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty, Written by Mark Boal

With Amour and Django being ineligible, I'm thinking two of these will be left out of the Oscar race. I'm really crossing my fingers for Looper to eke it out, because despite a healthy showing of critics prizes so far, it just feels like an Oscar snubee in the making.

2012 Capsule Reviews

As the season revs up I tend to spend less time on full reviews, but often deposit a paragraph or two for new films (or old ones I've just caught up with) in one post throughout the winter.