Back in January, we wrote about director AJ Schnack's (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) efforts to create awards for non-fiction filmmaking that would be ... somewhat more relevant than the Academy Awards. Back when the Oscar shortlist for docs came out, Schnack wrote an angry diatribe about the process and the films selected (and, more importantly, those that were not selected) that echoed the sentiments of many of us who write about, or make, documentary films.

Although I'm not at all displeased that Alex Gibney ultimately won the Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and would have been equally happy if No End in Sight had won, there were some glaring omissions in the Oscar shortlist that were truly appalling, most notably In the Shadow of the Moon and King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

Documentaries and foreign films, for the most part, are thrown into a cinematic void in North America. If not on PBS, or featuring Al Gore or Michael Moore, the docs usually don't get seen. The same goes for films that have, gasp!, subtitles. Both are pretty unfortunate, considering the amazing selections that each offers. Yet even with breakthroughs like An Inconvenient Truth, Amelie, or The Passion of the Christ, documentaries and foreign films hit a very low ceiling when it comes to mainstream viewing.

And this is really ticking off Michael Moore. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the documentary filmmaker is "mad as hell" about the fact that both types of films are shut out of theaters, and he is itching to change it. Moore says: "My new year's resolution is to sit down with the heads of exhibition chains and have them devote one screen in their multiplexes to nonfiction and foreign films." (Another option they're looking into: one night a week, like the usually-weak Monday nights.) He continues: "People want to see documentaries, but there's a disconnect between that desire and the exhibitors out there. We're not asking for charity. This could be on the 15th screen of a multiplex that would otherwise have the sixth showing of the new Harry Potter movie. Some of these films make $200 or $300 per screen."

I would love to see this happen. However, I worry about what happens after the initial rush. It's so very easy to say, if the starting box office take is week, that it wouldn't work. Hopefully, they'll realize that it takes some time to foster. Many people might shun the possibility, but then there are those who will take a chance, fall in love with what they see, and not only bring their friends, but have their eyes opened to two huge, and wonderful areas of cinema. Then again, I'm wishing big, in hopes that original films can start thriving instead of the continual barrage of remakes.

I know people have said this every year since digital video became a viable filmmaking tool, but 2007 really has been a great year for documentaries. Still, it takes more to impress me than a film about the war or the environment, and cute penguins only go so far. Most documentaries behave as if they were newspapers. They're relevant today, but tomorrow they're lining birdcages. Or at least someone is making pretty hanging mobiles out of discarded DVDs. This is not to disparage hot topic films; they serve their purpose. Though Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 failed to prevent G.W. Bush from being re-elected, it sure stirred up some discussion. And it's possible that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth actually helped, in some small way, improve our planet's chances at a bright future. No, I ask a lot of a documentary. I ask it the toughest question of all: do I ever want to see this again?

I ask this because I'm concerned about film as an art form. Even a newspaper story has to be -- or at least should be -- well written. A great story has a hook, a way with language, and an emotional center. It's one thing to report on an amazing story, but it's another thing entirely to ask people to sit through a dull film. I have no patience for objective journalism in documentaries, mainly because there's no such thing. If a film tries to be objective, it's only pretending. I love films in which the maker throws him or herself into the very fabric of the film. What I hate most of all is films that use the same, tired old documentary format: talking heads and photos, and if we're lucky, some video clips. If you're just going to photograph someone sitting in a room and talking, why not write it as a newspaper story?

As you know from reading Ryan Stewart's post below, the main face of Cinematical is changing. That doesn't mean the indie, foreign and short film coverage you've come to know and love here is going away -- a lot of it is just moving to it's own house (or really, it's own bedroom in the big house that now makes up Cinematical). Starting right ... about ... now! ... you will be able to get all your "classic" Cinematical -- reviews of indies, foreigns, obscure art house films and shorts, penetrating interviews with indie filmmakers, news on the world of indie film, and, of course, lots of film festival coverage, -- at CineIndie. I'll be hanging out with you there as managing editor of CineIndie, and you'll see some familiar faces posting there, and eventually some new ones as well.

Cinematical and CineIndie will work together to cover the major film fests with our usual extensive coverage -- tomorrow, in fact, we'll be starting our Sundance coverage at our spandy-new space. Jette Kernion will be keeping her eagle-eye out for breaking Sundance news and deals for us, and James Rocchi, Scott Weinberg, Kevin Kelly and I will be on the ground in Park City, bringing you a slew of reviews, interviews, and all that hot Sundance scene action. We'll be cutting a wide swath through the Sundance schedule, bringing you the scoop on docs and features, competition films and experimentals, shorts and animation, and lots of video interviews with indie filmmakers and actors. Make sure you check back often, as we'll be posting day and night from January 18-29 from the Sundance Film Festival.

We hope that you'll think this is a good change for Cinematical, as we do. Please join us over at CineIndie for tons of new indie film coverage, and keep on coming to Cinematical's front page for your mainstream fare.

Hi, and welcome to the grand opening of CineIndie, the brand-new indie film blog branch of the Cinematical family tree! You can kind of think of us as the cozy little refurbished arthouse theater down the road apiece from the big multiplex -- a place where you can come to get all the news you want on the world of indie film.

One of the reasons I'm thrilled about this change is that it will allow those of us who are really passionate about indie film to devote the majority of our energy to covering it for you. We'll be greatly expanding the breadth and depth of our coverage of all things indie, bringing you interviews with indie directors, reviews of indies, foreigns, docs and shorts, and more. We'll be covering news on indie film, and more articles targeted at filmmakers as well.

My Film Clips column will be here, and you'll probably see Jette Kernion's IndieSeen, Jeffrey Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows, and Richard Von Busack's After Images there as well. We'll be able to cover even more independent films, and I'm especially looking forward to being able to give some more love to under-appreciated or under-covered fest films and all you truly independent filmmakers out there maxing out your credit cards in pursuit of your dreams.

As CineIndie's managing editor, I'd like to invite you to help us create the kind of site you want to come back to every day. So sit down, have a nice latte, and open up with us about what you really want to read here. For the next two weeks we'll be nose-to-the-grindstone at the Sundance Film Festival, so be sure to check back often -- we often post at 3am from fests, so there's likely to be something fresh no matter when you pop by.

It wasn't so long ago that breaking $100 million at the box office was a big deal. Now, according to boxofficemojo.com, there have been 351 movies to pull off this feat, several of them in current release: The Devil Wears Prada, Mission: Impossible III, Click, Talladega Nights, Superman Returns, The Da Vinci Code, X-Men: The Last Stand, Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The last four cracked the all-time top 100.

Incidentally, of the top 351, 70 films have broken $200 million, 22 films have broken $300 million, 7 films have broken $400 million (Dead Man's Chest is one of them), and only one -- Titanic -- has reached $600 million.

Back in January, former Vice President Al Gore impressed our own Kim Voynar with a sizzling Sundance Q&A session after a screening of his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. At the time, Kim aptly noted the Veep's two separate modes -- Captain Boring and Fiery Desk Pounder -- and Fiery Desk Pounder Gore has recently been out on the stump for his new documentary about the dangers of global warming. Wait ... we're calling it global climate change these days, aren't we?  Whatever the issue is being called currently, Gore remains impressively passionate about it, and in talking with the Chicago Sun Times, he cracked wise in declaring his documentary to be the "ultimate action movie." This is by way of being a clever suggestion about his film inspiring citizens to action, which would in turn inspire politicians to action.* There's some more information in the article (which you can read here) about Gore's future political ambitions, but this site is a movie blog, not a politics blog, and this blogger knows better than to go there.

My question for you, readers, is how far pushed is your tolerance for political issue-oriented documentaries? Are you really into them, and glad they exist as another tool for furthering the debate, or do you just perceive them as yet another method for the talking heads to scream at each other while playing fast and loose with the facts?

*Okay, so this might not be top-notch comedy, but cut the man a break -- for a politician this is actually pretty high level stuff. Let's remember that in his world Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh are the closest things he can find to comedy.

Last week, our Monday Morning Poll topic was on the upcoming 9/11 films -- United 93, which comes out this month, and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, starring Nicolas Cage, which opens August 11. At the same time we asked that poll question (and we're certainly not the only film site asking ourselves and our readers if it's too soon for a film about 9/11) -- the Seattle Arab and Iranian Film Festival (SAIFF) was running here in Seattle. It's a small festival, without the furious deal-making and hot "scene" of Sundance or the red carpets and brouhaha surrounding Cannes, or even the mild fervor that will be generated in Seattle at the end of May with the opening of the Seattle International Film Festival.

Yet now, perhaps more than ever before, smaller film fests -- especially the culture-centric fests like SAIFF, the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, which ran here recently, and lots of other smaller fests around the country -- matter. They matter because it is at these smaller fests that hundreds of seeds of social conscience and cultural understanding are sown. Hopefully some of those seeds will get picked up and scattered around at the larger fests where they'll get more press and attention, but even for those that don't score large play on the festival circuit, much less the Holy Grail of indie film, distribution, small film festivals give their voices a chance to be heard.

Though he was hanging around ClickStar's press events as long ago as January, Danny DeVito has just now signed a deal with the company to create a documentary-only broadband channel called Jersey Docs. As Karina told us at the beginning of the year, ClickStar is a Morgan Freeman-Intel collaboration, dedicated to making "new...films available for download before (or, instead of) premiering in theaters." In the case of DeVito's project, since his goal is to make documentaries that fail to score distribution available to to the general public, it's going to be primarily instead of, though he does hope to offer a few titles after their theatrical runs, as well.

Starting this fall, the films chosen (DeVito will "provide artistic direction") by the Jersey Docs team will be available for download to either rent or own, depending on individual licensing agreements, for an as-yet undermined price. Interestingly, DeVito emphasized that the venture has goals beyond altruism, saying "It's not just a labor of love -- ClickStar will be making money for the filmmakers and for themselves." Clearly, his hope is that filmmakers will start to see Jersey Docs as a plausible first option in terms of exposure and profits, rather than a fall-back choice should distribution not work out.

What would happen if you took a group of middle-school boys from a tough, inner-city school district in Baltimore, and transplanted them to a boarding school in Kenya, in the middle of nowhere? That’s the question the Baraka program asked, and for seven years the program, funded by a private foundation, picked a group of boys from Baltimore public schools each year to enroll in the Baraka school. The boys accepted would get two years of free tuition, room and board in Kenya, in an environment where they had one-on-one attention from teachers for the first time in their young lives.

Filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing spent over three years chronicling the experience of four such boys: Devon, Montrey, and brothers Richard and Romesh - boys they came to think of as The Boys of Baraka. When I spoke with Rachel Grady on the phone for this interview, the thing that struck me most was the passion with which she spoke of these boys she set out to film, and ultimately befriended. The insight Grady has gained from working with the boys and their families, she says, has forever changed her perspective on life in our society, especially for poor kids growing up in the inner city.

(interview below the fold)