Doc Soup Man Tom Roston’s Documentary Oscar streak is over, but he’s planning a come back next year with a new standard for predicting the winner.
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Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.You can follow Tom on Twitter @DocSoupMan.
awards
Oscar 2012: Predicting the Documentary Winners
Who will win? Doc Soup Man has picked it for four years running. But this year, he says, is one of the closest races in years.
Continue reading this entry »Doc Soup: Do You Care What Happens at the Oscars?
Let’s be totally reductive for a moment, and say that there are two kinds of documentary-lovers: those who enjoy watching the Oscars and those who don’t. I am very much the former, and often when I bring up my interest in the Academy Awards, I am slapped around for my interest in such commercial puffery.
Continue reading this entry »Doc Soup: Oscar Nominated ’127 Hours’: Not a Documentary, But Close
It’s been said many times before — heck, I’ve said it more times than I could count — that truth is stranger than fiction. But that doesn’t mean that fiction can’t sometimes trump truth. Take, for example, the retelling of Aron Ralston’s (pictured, far right) true-life story of falling in a canyon in Utah and
Continue reading this entry »Looking Forward to 2011
Another year is upon us so let’s look forward to 2011 for the most exciting and intriguing things that’ll be happening in the documentary world. Here are five that are on my radar: 5) The Launch of OWN The Oprah Winfrey Network means a whole new outlet for doc material but there’s even more here.
Continue reading this entry »Doc Soup: Let the Awards Season Begin
Leaves have fallen and there’s a nip in the air… which means, it must be movie awards season. Yes, in recent weeks, we’ve seen nomination lists released from three outlets: the International Documentary Association, the Gotham Awards and the Cinema Eye Honors. Here are their nominations for Best Doc Feature: Cinema Eye Honors Armadillo —
Continue reading this entry »Doc Soup: What Happened with the Docs at Oscar 2010?
Hollywood’s biggest night was not, sadly, documentary film’s finest hour. The 2010 Oscar ceremony will be most remembered for how The Hurt Locker trumped Avatar, and how Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director award. But, for documentary fans, it may be remembered for a couple of missed opportunities. Things certainly
Continue reading this entry »Doc Soup: More Fearless Oscar Predictions – Looking at the Shorts with an Academy Voter
The Best Documentary Short award is probably the least watched, least understood and least appreciated category at the Academy Awards. Okay, maybe it’s tied with Best Sound Editing. Still, that’s too bad. Fortunately, some of the winners have made the most of this underdog status in their speeches, such as when Jessica Yu joked in
Continue reading this entry »Doc Soup: Fearless Oscar Predictions
It’s that time of year again — when some of us roll our eyes at the foolish, self-aggrandizing notion of awards and others of us lap it up, savoring every detail, prognostication and red carpet mishap. I am solidly in the latter camp, and this year’s documentary Oscar race is a particularly interesting one because
Continue reading this entry »Doc Soup: An Open Letter to Fisher Stevens
Hi Fisher, I want to congratulate you on your huge accomplishment in producing The Cove. It’s a fantastic film. It unspools like a great thriller and it captures a terrible wrong on tape — it does everything I think a great documentary should do. Your Oscar nomination is well deserved, and I have been watching
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