FINAL UPDATE: The Academy Feature Doc Short List

The final list is:

Born Into Brothels
Home of The Brave
Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
In The Realms Of The Unreal
Riding Giants
The Ritchie Boys
The Story Of The Weeping Camel
Super Size Me
Tell Them Who You Are
Touching The Void
Tupac:Ressurection
Twist of Faith

Expected contenders left off the Academy list include:

Bright Leaves
Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood & The Holocaust
Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster
Tarnation
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Almost all of the "political docs" of the season were left off the list, disqualified for TV airplay.

The Academy Doc Short List

Update 11:30pm – Variety reports that Imaginary Witness: Hollywood & The Holocaust and Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession have NOT made the cut, along with Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst and our earlier reported Metallica doc.

That leaves three titles left (on our list… six on Variety’s) to be released tomorrow by the Academy… we hope… they really drag behind on docs…

Tuesday – 7pm
The Academy always makes this process difficult for those of us who love docs, but the nine of twelve total on the "short list" that are 100% confirmed are:

Born Into Brothels
Bright Leaves
Home of The Brave
In The Realms Of The Unreal
Riding Giants
Super Size Me
Tell Them Who You Are
Touching The Void
Twist of Faith (which may actually be In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick’s Journey of Faith)

Still awaiting confirmation are:

Imaginary Witness: Hollywood & The Holocaust
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

That still leaves one outstanding title to be found… It will not be Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster.

Oy…

I wrote a long post about that braying jackass Roger Friedman, who spun a mess about Oscar and Jamie Lee Curtis today in one of his hissy fits…. and it didn’t post for some reason.  I’m sure it’s my fault somehow…

That the post didn’t work… not that Roger is an anal pore.

But in better news…

…DVDs of Kinsey and Sideways just landed on my doorstep…

One of the six Technicolor seals on the DVDs was broken… by the letter asking that I report if any of the seals has been broken.  It looks like the paper got a little under the adhesive and when I seperated the DVD from the paper, it pulled off the seal.  I think I’m safe.  But if a copy of Sideways ends up on the web with my name on it… you’ll know what happened.

Can I blog in jail?

The Alexander Screening

2 New Screeners

On the ongoing "What’s arrived today?" watch, today two excellent docs from IFC, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession and Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster arrived.  Interestingly, Z Channel is on DVD and the Metallica doc is on tape… hmmm…

More From AICN on Phantom

Thanks to Drew/Moriarty for putting up a more complete look at MCN’s Phantom screening and other Phantom screenings.  One writer does an excellent job reporting on the Schumacher Q&A. 

The newest AICN report is here.

Weekend Box Office

Well…

Incredibles held.  No surprise there.

The Polar Express was not disastrous… the opening suggests a $100 million domestic gross is possible and perhaps even likely… the cost of the movie makes that seem like chump change.  But it’s a hell of a lot better than the overall reviews would suggest to you.

I maintain that one of the biggest mistakes ever in distribution was putting this thing out wide this week when a significantly more attractive version – IMAX 3-D – was available and could have put critics, whose help was needed to fight off The Incredibles and Spongebob, in a much better state of mind.  Word of mouth, too.  A real opportunity lost.  A month on IMAX followed by a wide release… perhaps the late delivery of the picture limited Warners’ options.  But still…

After The Sunset also failed to qualify as a disaster, but also will not come close to making its money in the domestic marketplace, home entertainment included.  But where there is Brosnan, there is some international hope… but not much.  Expect this to be Brett Ratner’s weakest grosser since his first film, Money Talks.

Focus Features kept critics away from Seed of Chucky and got around $8 million for their restrictive effort.  That said, the release date is an utter mystery, too late to ride the Halloween-period train that served a couple of other crappy horror films last month and right in the way of so much high-powered competition that it had zero chance.  They really would have been better off trying to run this scam in February if they were afraid of The Grudge.

Speaking of The Grudge, it will hit $100 million Monday or Tuesday.  Stunningly, this inferior flick will come very, very close to matching the grosses for The Ring, a surperior film, the sequel to which is coming, forced into an early ’05 release after a troubled production.

Expanding wide next week is Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which mysteriously went early into the face of mostly crappy reviews.  One supposes that Universal hopes that the title remains a first choice for women next week and into Thanksgiving and that most markets will forget the barrage of big name insults by next Friday.  I guess.

Finally, Searchlight’s dueling Oscar contenders, Sideways and Kinsey continued in limited runs.  Sideways’ $9170 per screen on 66 screens is okay… but not sensational and suggests to me that the studio needs a new marketing focus when they go wider later this month. Kinsey did a sensational $34,210 per screen, but looking at the art house titles that beat that this year (I Heart Huckabees, The Motorcycle Diaries, Sideways) suggests that no one can rest on those laurels.  Searchlight has shown, amidst so much great success, a weakness in putting the petal to the metal on Oscar-season films that get strong reviews, from Antwone Fisher to In America and now, I fear, Kinsey and Sideways.  (Huckabees was too hard a sell, past the talent, for me to hold it against anyone.)  Let’s go, guys… these two movies don’t deserve to be swamped by Finding Neverland.

Getting AICNed

AICN and I have gone round and round over the years, but this is the first time that an event I was responsible for was subject to the slings & arrows of the outrageously anonymous.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Drew/Moriarty was looking for a negative review of the film or anything.  But he got one and that one was bad… really bad. 

I’m not 100% convinced that this person was actually at the screening… there are no details of the evening that suggest they were, neither about the specific screening or about the Q&A afterwards.  Additionally, the post stinks quite specifically of arguments made by one specific long lead writer… which could well have been regurgitated by someone else who wanted to hurt the film.

I’m not saying that it’s not fair or possible to hate this film… or any film.  A friend of mine hates Andrew Lloyd Webber and said of the film, “You can carve a piece of shit into a beautiful swan… but it’s still a piece of shit.”  He also happened to agree with me that the Academy would lavish love on the film, whose artistry he appreciated.  He just hated the music.

In any case, there are two reviews up on Oscarwatch.com.  One of the writers was introduced to me last night, though I did not know her on-web moniker until reading her review.

A second review comes from an Oscarwatcher who found the comments on another unnamed board.  The review is insanely detailed.  And the details about the screening assure that this person was there.  It is the fourth posting on this page about the review that AICN posted.  (Added on Sunday morning… the link to the original post is here.)

It is terribly frustrating to see an on-web review… especially a single one… attacking a film like this… even more so when there are no identifying marks that assure that the person was really at the screening.  There was a long standing ovation… there was applause for all of the actors and many of the creative team during credits… and the Q&A was long and energetic.

Like I wrote… there is no reason to think that there wasn’t a part of the audience that did not like the film at all.  But it was a pretty damned happy screening.  And I was there.

How Powerful Can Brand Imagery Be?

Just saw an ad for Karo syrup featuring an Amish-ish woman who gets on a bus wearing her white hat with strings, but there is another set of white strings and you can hear a little pseudo-Elton John… she’s clearly meant to be listening to an iPod.  The whole spot is about "something things change, some don’t."

Remarkable.  Those iPod ads are so strong that two white cords coming from someone’s head and a little music now signals a very specific recall.

A marketer’s wet dream…

Another MCN Screening

Joel Schumacher talks to the crowd after the Phantom of the Opera screening

How Bad Is It?

The Polar Express‘ estimated $2.6 million start yesterday must hurt.  There are not a lot of really good points of comparison in box office history, except to note that there are many, many Wednesday openings that have done better and that while being behind the fifth day of The Incredibles is no shame, being 40% behind is kinda rough.

Looking back at the last couple of years, Day 8 of The Matrix Revolutions did $2.2 million on the analagous Wednesday and Day 5 of 8 Mile did $2.5 million.  Of course, neither of those films passed $140 million domestic.  And neither hit their numbers on an opening day.

Tis a pity…

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Welcome To Slow News Day Wednesday

Not much to say… but many movies to see… oh what a life!

Is This Real?

This was sent in by a reader, claiming it was in the Variety banner rotation.  I don’t mistrust the reader, but after about 250 click-thrus, it seems that the ad is out of rotation.

Have you caught the error yet?

What was most interesting about the endless clicking thru was that a banner for Kevin Bacon and The Woodsman turned up about 40% of the times I clicked, followed by Universal screenings about 30% and the other 30% made up of the rest of the banners, including Sony Classics, Roadside Attractions, Warner Indie, UA, Disney, Fox Searchlight, Sony, IFC and Paramount.

Beyond The Sea Screening

The Audience Goes Wild When Kevin Spacey Arrives For Q&A

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