I almost called this a 'Watch This' post, and then a 'Fan Rant', but either way, the general idea is that I'd recommend all of you to tune in or at least record PBS tonight for the broadcast premiere of Nina Davenport's terrific documentary, Operation Filmmaker, in which a young Iraqi film student is invited to work on the set of Liev Schreiber's Everything is Illuminated and how that experience begins to unravel for all involved -- Davenport included (and that's not to mention appearances from Elijah Wood and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as themselves!).

It's fascinating in the purest trainwreck sense, and deserves to be paired up with Overnight and shown to all fledgling filmmakers as a guide for what NOT to do when all manner of opportunities are offered to you in the field. Davenport's correlations to the Iraqi conflict as her subject becomes less and less cooperative are still shaky at best, but that doesn't stop this doc from making my Top Twenty of the year.

And nothing against Dear Zachary..., but I'm pretty sure that this doc won't have you in tears by the end. Check your local listings, though: some have said 10 PM EST, others 11 PM.

For a lot of movie geeks, it's unnerving when the Oscar nominations are announced and there are films on the list that we haven't seen. (Except for the short-film categories, because no one's seen those.) This happens most regularly with documentaries, which often play only for a week or two at the local art house, if they play there at all.

On Jan. 8-10, Tribeca Cinemas in Manhattan will do its part to help this problem by screening six of the 15 docs that are on the shortlist for the Oscar nomination. The filmmakers, all of whom are alumni of the Tribeca Film Festival, will be on hand to present their work and participate in Q-and-A's. The event is sponsored by the Tribeca Film Institute and Gucci (because when you think of high-quality documentary filmmaking, you think of Gucci).

The films on the schedule are: At the Death House Door (about a prison chaplain who ministers to Death Row inmates), The Garden (about a community garden in South Central L.A.), I.O.U.S.A. (about America's debt problem), Man on Wire (about the crazy French guy who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974 -- this will probably win the Oscar), Pray the Devil Back to Hell (about Liberian women bringing peace to their country after years of warlords), and They Killed Sister Dorothy (about the murder of a Catholic nun and social activist in Brazil).

Full details on the screenings are here. If you're in the NYC area, this is a great opportunity not just to see the films (Man on Wire is out on DVD anyway), but to meet the filmmakers. Every now and then, the rest of us get envious of you NYC dwellers. Every now and then.

Oliver Stone might be done with Dubya, but he's not about to leave the world of Presidential intrigue. Variety reports that he's moving onto another controversial political figure -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But this time around, the project won't provide a fictional look back in time to young rabblerousing. Instead, it's a documentary that Stone has been working on for six months, to be ready next year.

Surprisingly, this won't be a feel-good doc, even though Stone and Chavez seem to be quite chummy. Instead: "It's about Chavez and the South American revolution," Stone says. The documentary will detail the opposition Chavez has faced, including the distaste from the Bush administration. (Stone just loves the Dubya.) That being said, it'll probably still be a Chavez-friendly picture.

And that's not all -- he's also got another doc in the works, one that he's keeping to himself for the time being. Rumor has it that it would be about Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Stone has denied that. Any ideas? Chances are it'll be another notable figure.

Color me too busy to actually "follow" people on YouTube, but for those who have the time, the patience and the sanity, there seems to be quite the amount of fascinating content to devour. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that producers Chris Adams, Steve Kearney and RJ Cutler have teamed to create a documentary out of a real-life YouTube love story. Essentially, two teenagers -- Daniel from Australia and Shannon from America -- met through YouTube and documented their relationship before deciding to actually meet in person. However, when Daniel traveled to the states, Homeland Security snatched him up on suspicion of terrorism, and, well, they both lived happily ever after.

Actually, I don't know what happened after that (did she think her internet boyfriend was a terrorist, and/or did he show Homeland Security his YouTube videos on his iPhone?), but we'll find out soon enough -- the producers plan to piece together a doc out of YouTube footage and other footage, and will deliver it either in movie theaters or through some other form, like, um, YouTube. Are any of you familiar with this story? Do you think it would make a good doc? Are there videos of these two still available to watch online? And are you a terrorist currently trying to romance some Yank on YouTube?

One might chalk up a reluctance to cry at the movies to having sat through roughly four hundred of them a year and grown numb to the more melodramatic efforts. And yet I can't say that I've ever been given much cause to shed tears in the theater or at home, even from the earliest years of my moviegoing. I'd be willing to admit it -- heck, I believe that I'm just about to -- but I've just never been one to end up wiping at my cheeks when the lights come up, and yet more and more often, I find myself wondering: Why not?

Are the filmmakers to blame for failing in other respects to elicit tears for these characters and the fates they face? Sometimes. Am I to blame for coming in on guard, waiting for a film to get at me and maybe throwing up some hurdles along the way if there's no lack of trying? Perhaps. Isn't it acceptable to feel something without showing it, and to do so without being labeled a callous bastard? You better believe it.

I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed reading all your comments today following the television debut of Dear Zachary last night, and I'm happy to say someone else has been reading them too. Here now with a special message for Cinematical readers is Dear Zachary director Kurt Kuenne:

"Thank you SO much to everyone who took the time to watch "Dear Zachary" on MSNBC last night and for all the incredibly supportive, passionate comments they've been leaving on the site. The support means the world to us. And we encourage you to share your feelings about what happened with the government of Canada; if this movie affected you and you want to see things change to prevent a recurrence in the future, they're not going to know unless you tell them. That's the greatest thing anyone can do to honor Andrew & Zachary's memory. Information on who to write to can be found at www.dearzachary.com/bailreform. (I saw one viewer comment saying that they couldn't get on the website yesterday; it's working fine, we just had some overload with all the traffic from yesterday's show, but it should be fine now.) It shows again on MSNBC this Sunday, December 14th at 4 PM EST, and will likely be re-broadcast again on MSNBC very soon after, so please feel free to tell anyone you know. (Also feel free to tell MSNBC you'd like them to show it again. :) The DVD is being released on February 10th and can be pre-ordered on Amazon. Thank you so much to the Cinematical community for all your tremendous support during this entire year. I can't tell you how much it means to both myself and Andrew's parents."

Ever since we began championing the fantastic documentary Dear Zachary earlier this year, several of you have written in wanting to know where and when you can see it for yourselves. Well, cancel plans for tonight because the flick will air on MSNBC later this evening at 9pm EST, and will be shown again at midnight EST. That time adjusts for the other time zones, so my advice is to look it up on your cable guide to get the exact time it's airing in your neck of the woods. Here's what some folks have said about Dear Zachary:

"One of the best documentaries I have ever seen in my entire life... a film that will rock you to your core. You will cry. You will hurt – and this film will sit with you for days, weeks, months. But you will come away believing in people. Believing that even where there is evil, there is also a tremendous amount of good." - Erik Davis, Cinematical.com

"Before all else, there's Dear Zachary, documentarian Kurt Kuenne's shockingly intimate account of his road trip a few years ago, after his childhood friend, Andrew Bagby, was shot under mysterious circumstances in 2001. Excuse the hyperbole, but Dear Zachary is one of the most alarmingly forceful documentaries in years." - Eric Kohn, IndieWire.com

"This documentary will rip out your heart and leave you in the snow without a sweater. But afterwards, all wounded and broken down, you will see the power of the human spirit even in the face of the darkest of souls." - Sarah Diamond, director of programming, Slamdance Film Festival

"...The talk of Slamdance... Dear Zachary is, above all, a virtuoso feat in editing, and Kuenne uses the material at his disposal to devastating effect... it's impossible not to feel emotionally exhausted." - Peter Debruge, Variety

Check out the trailer after the jump. MSNBC. Tonight. Watch it.

The votes for top honors at the 2008 International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards were split between two very different docs: Man on Wire, about the whimsical Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974; and Waltz with Bashir, a memoir of life in war-torn Lebanon that's completely animated.

The IDA Awards were held Friday night in Los Angeles, hosted by everyone's favorite doc-maker Morgan Spurlock (perhaps a consolation prize for his own 2008 film, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, not being nominated). The other nominees for the top prize, called the Distinguished Feature Award, were Kassim the Dream, Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, and Young@Heart. That last one took home a separate prize, the Alan Ett Music Documentary Award.

Man on Wire has been earning raves ever since it premiered at Sundance in January, where it had the rare distinction of winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award. Rotten Tomatoes has declared it the best-reviewed film of all time, scoring positive reviews from 100% of its 133 critics. It's a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination and a good bet for the win.

Waltz with Bashir, on the other hand, won't be getting an Oscar nod, at least not in the documentary category -- it's ineligible because it didn't open theatrically before the Aug. 31 deadline. (The doc eligibility period is September-August, not January-December like it is for other awards.) It may still be nominated in the foreign-language and animated categories, however.

The IDA Awards also included a career achievement prize for Werner Herzog and a "pioneer award" for Rob Epstein, whose films The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989) both won Oscars. IndieWIRE has the complete list of IDA winners here.

It was inevitable that someone would eventually make a documentary about the folks who upload videos to YouTube, and it's kinda fitting that we get to watch a trailer for said doc on, well, YouTube. Directed by Chuck Potter, I Want My Three Minutes Back "examines the phenomenon of online video through the stories of YouTube video creators." I'm not very hip to the whole YouTube scene (then again, I'm not very hip to any scene), so the following names might not mean much to me, but they may mean a whole lot to you. Among the folks who participated in the doc are Tay Zonday (Chocolate Rain), Judson Laipply (Evolution of Dance), Michael Buckley (What The Buck Show), Phillip DeFranco (sxePhil), Christine Gambito (Happy Slip), Terry Roth (Zipster), Katie Graham (K80Blog), Paul Robinette (Renetto) and Travis and Jonathan (Jackie and Dunlap of Red State Update).

I Want My Three Minutes Back is currently attempting the film festival route, and depending on the final product this is totally something I could see premiering at SXSW. Check out the trailer below, and answer this: You may waste time watching these YouTube videos, but are you really interested in the people who created them?



[via Spout]

Sure enough, the first week of December brings the first formal slew of awards nominations, today's coming from Film Independent's Spirit Awards. The Hollywood Reporter bring us the list of nominees, with dramas Ballast, Frozen River and Rachel Getting Married each tied for the most nominations (six a piece, including Best Feature; the other two nominees there are Wendy and Lucy and The Wrestler).

Now, these awards aren't necessarily Oscar precursors or anything -- some of these films are just too small -- but it's difficult to deny that the likes of Milk, The Visitor, The Wrestler, Rachel, River and documentary contender Man on Wire are all looking at the first of many nominations in the coming weeks, most of which I can safely say are or will be deserving. I can't speak for Ballast, but it's been earning attention in the indie world for months and months, so do as I do and keep an eye out for it.

The greatest assurance can only be taken once the Spirit Awards are awarded on February 21. See the full list of nominees after the jump.