Long Enough To Reach The Ground

What's the right length for a film? Esquire Magazine makes one argument:

The 90-Minute Movie: Because 80 Minutes Is Too Short, and 100 Is Too Long

They could have cut out the entire China subplot from The Dark Knight — easily 20 of that movie's 152 convoluted minutes — with no effect on your enjoyment or comprehension of the film. And was it me, or did the fifth hour of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button start to drag?

Also, the list of films shortlisted in the Academy Awards short documentary category was released this week: almost all of them, as usual, 39 minutes long. Many are really films made for the 52-minute television hour, but cut down to 39 to take a shot at Oscar recognition. No nomination? Put 13 minutes back in, go to cable. (There have been a few exceptions over the years, notably the 17-minute Two Hands: The Leon Fleisher Story (2006) by Nathaniel Kahn.)

Oscar short documentary contenders named

Thirty-seven films were submitted in the short doc category and on Friday the Academy's documentary branch released a list of the eight films that have been short-listed. Three to five of them will be nominated when the nominations are announced on Feb. 2.

Above: The Quad, on 13th Street.

Freeheld

Huge congratulations to Cynthia Wade for her Academy Award win with Freeheld. I was thrilled to see this happen.

The Short List

15 Docs Move Ahead in 2007 Oscar® Race

Beverly Hills, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 15 films in the Documentary Feature category will advance in the voting process for the 80th Academy Awards®. Seventy pictures had originally qualified in the category.

The 15 films are listed below in alphabetical order:

“Autism: The Musical”
“Body of War”
“For the Bible Tells Me So”
“Lake of Fire”
“Nanking”
“No End in Sight”
“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience”
“Please Vote for Me”
“The Price of Sugar”
“A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman”
“The Rape of Europa”
“Sicko”
“Taxi to the Dark Side”
“War/Dance”
“White Light/Black Rain”

Documentary Branch members will now select the five nominees from among the 15 titles on the shortlist.

The Numbers Game

Last year, when I received notice I had been accepted to the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies program at The New School, I began keeping track of the documentaries I watched.

"An Inconvenient Truth" was the 100th since I started that list. Of course, it won at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, and "The Blood of Yingzhou District" won in the short doc category.

That was number 94 for me.