Docu-Drama: Surprises and Snubs for the Best Documentary Oscar

While it's seldom the most attention-grabbing category, 2011's Best Documentary Oscar race has already provided some of the year's biggest surprises and snubs, leaving no clear favorite in a field with a wide variety of themes, styles and messages. While most Americans don't have the opportunity to watch documentaries in theaters, several of the nominees (as well as great docs that didn't make the cut) are available on Netflix or will be soon. So it's a good time to dust off your queue and take a look at some of the best docs of 2010 while we can still remember them.

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Waiting For Superman (snub)

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Until the nominations came out, I was sure that Waiting for "Superman" would easily win the Oscar for Best Doc. After all, WFS is about a subject many Americans are deeply concerned about (education), provides a solution that many Americans want to know more about (charter schools), and got a ton of positive press and free promotion from talk shows and flattering news coverage. So what happened? Maybe the buzz for WFS peaked too early, or it suffered from criticism from documentarians that a key scene was misrepresented. But my guess is that liberal Academy voters bristled at the film's attack on teachers unions, which shoulder much (some might say too much) of the blame in the film for America's failing education system. Critics also attacked WFS for being too one-sided in its praise of corporate-run charters and its condemnation of public schools, while ignoring other, arguably more important barriers to academic success like poverty, broken families and changes to our culture. Hollywood is a union, liberal town, and WFS might've seemed more like a Republican anti-union "free market" Trojan Horse the academy didn't want to reward. For a great critique of WFS, check out Diane Ravitch's article The Myth of Charter Schools. See the trailer for WFS above.

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Until the nominations came out, I was sure that Waiting for "Superman" would easily win the Oscar for Best Doc. After all, WFS is about a subject many Americans are deeply concerned about (education), provides a solution that many Americans want to know more about (charter schools), and got a ton of positive press and free promotion from talk shows and flattering news coverage. So what happened? Maybe the buzz for WFS peaked too early, or it suffered from criticism from documentarians that a key scene was misrepresented. But my guess is that liberal Academy voters bristled at the film's attack on teachers unions, which shoulder much (some might say too much) of the blame in the film for America's failing education system. Critics also attacked WFS for being too one-sided in its praise of corporate-run charters and its condemnation of public schools, while ignoring other, arguably more important barriers to academic success like poverty, broken families and changes to our culture. Hollywood is a union, liberal town, and WFS might've seemed more like a Republican anti-union "free market" Trojan Horse the academy didn't want to reward. For a great critique of WFS, check out Diane Ravitch's article The Myth of Charter Schools. See the trailer for WFS above.

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Comments

[LMPE]

06:43 PM on 02/25/2011

A real snub was "Casino Jack and the United States of Money" about Jack Abramoff.

[mistercrispyusa]

02:41 PM on 02/25/2011

I think "Waiting for Superman" is the most over-hyped documentary of the year. Everyone knows the education system is broken, but Superman went at it in a completely wrong-headed fashion. Some people might be Waiting for Superman; I'm still waiting for a great documentary about our education system.

[Angelus2007]

01:03 PM on 02/25/2011

Its funny that people say Waiting for Superman is too one sided (which it may be), but don't care if a Michael Moore movie is one sided.

I think documentaries should be impartial, if they aren't they aren't documenting other than the filmakers view.

I think one of the best was "The Street Stops Here" about Bob Hurley and St. Anthonys High School basketball team. I don't think it is eligible since it was a PBS documentary, but it was still very good.

[mistercrispyusa]

02:43 PM on 02/25/2011

There's no such thing as an "impartial" documentary. If you insist there is, you don't know the first thing about movie making.

[Angelus2007]

03:21 PM on 02/25/2011

A documentary always has a point of view and can't always see everything, but it doesn't need to have an agenda. The documentary I mentioned, didn't paint all the players and coach in a positive light. It showed the good and the bad. It shows a look into the life of this team over a season. They didn't leave out a bad performance by a player or the team to make the team seem better than they were.

Maybe impartial is the wrong word, but many documentaries are intentionally skewed to the view of the filmmaker. They show only things that support their view. Take Farenheit 9/11 and Farenhype 9/11 and neither makes anything up, but tell two completely opposite points of view. Why? Because both decided to edit the film to show only statments and specific instances that support their view. Both had complaints from people in the film saying what they said was out of context to make a point they don't agree with. That isn't a documentary.