PhilipGlass Tagged Articles at Cinematical

To be eligible for the Academy Awards, a documentary feature must play theatrically, at least two showings a day, for at least a week in both Los Angeles County and the borough of Manhattan. (For documentary shorts, it only has to play in one location or the other.) And they have to do it by the end of August to be eligible for next year's Oscars, too -- which means time's a-wastin'!

That's where the International Documentary Association's DocuWeek comes in, screening more than a dozen worthy features and shorts in L.A. and New York so they'll be eligible for Oscar consideration (and so audiences can enjoy them, too, of course). Some of the films didn't get distribution deals when they played at film festivals, so they had no chance of earning Oscar eligibility without something like this.

New York's DocuWeek is happening now, running all day every day through Thursday at Village East Cinema and IFC Center. L.A.'s DocuWeek will be Aug. 22-28 at the ArcLight in Hollywood and Sherman Oaks. The films are more or less the same in both cities (four features and four shorts play in L.A. but not New York), and there are some real gems here.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (pictured) has already emotionally devastated about half the Cinematical staff (including myself, Will Goss, Monika Bartyzel, and Erik Davis), and you should take advantage of any opportunity you have to see it. An Unlikely Weapon tells the story of the photographer who snapped that famous shot of a Saigon policeman shooting a Viet Cong guerrilla in the head, and the aftermath of the photo. Glass is about love-him-or-hate-him film composer Philip Glass. War Child profiles a Sudanese refugee who has become an international rap star.

The list goes on. Check out the links for the full programs -- and if you're in New York or L.A., go see some docs!

There was a lot of complaining yesterday about the Oscar nominations, mostly from critics and other film writers who were disappointed with Dreamgirls not earning a Best Picture nod. And even those who weren't complaining about it were at least stunned to the point that the snub seemed to become the biggest news in the history of the Oscars (our own Scott Weinberg thankfully made no mention of it). For those who want a simple abridged version of the nomination coverage, GreenCine has it all.

Dana Stevens at Slate seems to be one of the only people who doesn't mind that Dreamgirls was left out of the main race, and instead asks the more important question: what happened to Volver? The film was a favorite for the foreign language category, and it certainly should have garnered Almodóvar another screenplay nomination. Others that Stevens felt deserved noms include Catherine O'Hara (I don't agree entirely, but I feel she's more deserving than Breslin) and Philip Glass' score for The Illusionist (Glass was instead nominated for his Notes on a Scandal work).