Oscar docs short list: Penguins and dancing and Murderball, oh my!

The short list of 15 contenders (out of 82 submissions) for the five coveted Oscar nom slots in the documentary category has been released. Most notably absent from the list are Grizzly Man and The Aristocrats (maybe that one had too much profanity for Oscar's tender ears).

The full short list includes: After Innocence; The Boys of Baraka (which our own Chris Campbell will be reviewing soon); Darwin's Nightmare; The Devil and Daniel Johnston; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Favela Rising; Mad Hot Ballroom; March of the Penguins; Murderball; Occupation: Dreamland; On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commision Report; Rize; Street Fight; 39 Pounds of Love; and Unknown White Male.

Only five of these 15 worthy films can make it to the final cut and get an Oscar nod. Our predictions are below the fold:

March of the Penguins, with over $76 million at the box office (practically unheard of for a documentary film) is just too successful to be ignored. It's almost guaranteed an Oscar nod just on the merit of its box office success, but that success could turn against it when it comes to actually winning the gold statue.

Rize and Favela Rising are both films about charismatic people using music to combat drugs and gang violence. Rize takes place in Los Angeles, and was directed by hip celeb photog David LaChapelle; Favela Rising was filmed in Brazil in the violent slums that bred 2002 Oscar fave City of God. It's unlikely that both of these films would get Oscar nods; although they are very different films, their themes are too similar. I loved Rize, but I'm betting that of the two, Favela Rising has the better shot at a nom; its gritty depiction of unbelievable violence and its heartwarming true story of a man who, against all odds, created a peaceful musical movement to fight the desolation he was surrounded by, gives it an edge over the slicker Rize.

There are two films focusing on kids from the inner city on the short list: Mad Hot Ballroom, about New York City fifth graders learning ballroom dancing to compete in a city-wide competition; and Boys of Baraka, about four boys from inner-city Baltimore who leave their homes to go to an experimental boarding school in Kenya, where they learn there is more to life than drugs, gangs and street violence. Of the two, my money is on Boys of Baraka to have the better shot at a nom; it hasn't made the money that Ballroom has, but Oscar loves an underdog.

Darwin's Nightmare is an environmental film, and if you look at Oscar noms in the docs category over the past decade or so, you'll note they tend to be weighted far more toward the inspirational human story and the political or current event investigatory story. Competing against some strong inspirational tales, Darwin's is not likely to make the cut. In the running for the inspirational slots are The Devil and Daniel Johnston, about a mentally ill artistic genius; Murderball, about quadriplegics playing rugby, Unknown White Male, about a man who wakes up on Coney Island with no idea who he is or how he got there; and 39 Pounds of Love, about a man with a rare disorder that stunted his growth, who was given only 6 years to live, but who surpassed those odds, and now wants to track down the doctor who gave up on him. Murderball might seem to be the obvious choice of this group, it's the best known of the pack. But my money is on the heartwarming 39 Pounds of Love to take the "inspirational" slot for the doc category.

That leaves After Innocence, a grueling film about men exonerated of crimes they didn't commit by DNA testing, sometimes after decades of unjust incarceration, and the lack of support our prison system gives those men after releasing them without so much as a "sorry about that"; Occupation: Dreamland, about soldiers in Iraq; On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commission Report; and Street Fight, a gritty film about the 2002 Mayoral race in Newark, NJ, when a 32-year-old Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School grad took on the deeply entrenched incumbent mayor in one of the nastiest political brawls you've ever seen; and Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room, about the Enron scandal.

You can bet that at least one of these films will win a slot; Oscar loves docs that turn a critical eye to current events (ala last years Super Size Me and 2001's Bowling for Columbine. Although I'd love to see Street Fight get in there, for its eye-opening look at our political system, Enron probably has the better shot at a nod, simply because it was bigger news. After Innocence could be a contender as well.

I think the most likely scenario for the five Oscar noms looks like this: March of the Penguins; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Favela Rising; 39 Pounds of Love; and After Innocence. An alternative scenario might have the most well-publicized of the contenders -- Penguins, Murderball, Enron, and Mad Hot Ballroom -- making the cut, with a fifth film, maybe Boys of Baraka, or Favela Rising,  getting in there to round things out, but I think that scenario is less likely.  We'll have to wait until all the noms are announced January 31, 2006, to see how it all plays out.