The Academy have announced their finalists in the Best Documentary Oscar category. Guess what isn't it the running anymore: Senna, The Interrupters, Page One: Inside the New York Times, and The Carrier! And that's just the biggies off the top of my head without research. Amir was just pontificating about Senna's Oscar hopes and he's hardly that movies only über fan. People will be up in arms. I suppose it wouldn't be the Best Documentary Feature, that storied and oft-controversial category, without these anger-making decisions. Remember when Grizzly Man got the boot? I know, right? Unthinkable though that still is...
The finalists are...
- Battle for Brooklyn (RUMER Inc.)
- Bill Cunningham New York (First Thought Films)
- Buck (Cedar Creek Productions)
- Hell and Back Again (Roast Beef Productions Limited)
- If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Marshall Curry Productions, LLC)
- Jane's Journey (NEOS Film GmbH & Co. KG)
- The Loving Story (Augusta Films)
- Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (@radical.media)
- Pina (Neue Road Movies GmbH)
- Project Nim (Red Box Films)
- Semper Fi: Always Faithful (Tied to the Tracks Films, Inc.)
- Sing Your Song (S2BN Belafonte Productions, LLC)
- Undefeated (Spitfire Pictures)
- Under Fire: Journalists in Combat (JUF Pictures, Inc.)
- We Were Here (Weissman Projects, LLC)
The highest profile films here are Buck, Pina (also eligible in Foreign Film), Project Nim, and Paradise Lose 3: Purgatory... but that's almost a whole shortlist in and of itself so expect more drama ahead.
Who are you rooting for and which snub makes you crazazy?