Saturday, February 24, 2018 at 8:00AM 
Tee hee. The Best Picture nominees are still very much in the air in this week's tweet collection after the jump. Subjects include but are not limited to: Black Panther, Lady Bird, Best Picture time frames, and a visual reminders of what Three Billboards is good for. Plus a visual reminder why the cat documentary Kedi had such wonderful "characters"...
Tuesday, December 26, 2017 at 3:00PM Each day a new year-in-review / recap list of sorts. Here's Glenn Dunks
Nathaniel has already looked at the foreign language hits of the year and a the top-grossers for films by or about women, people of colour, LGBTQ and more. Now it's my turn to chime in with a look at what non-fiction movies were doing at the box office. It ain't exactly pretty - but, then, the figures below don't always paint an accurate picture for the world of documentary.
Much like the rest of the independent and arthouse scenes, festivals and VOD/streaming are becoming the primary way for audiences to see documentaries. Some of the most buzzed and most discussed of the year, for instance, are Strong Island, Icarus, Voyeur and Chasing Coral, which never received a theatrical release beyond minimal Oscar-qualifying runs. Meanwhile, other significant 2017 titles like LA 92, Oklahoma City, Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds aired on TV.
TOP 40 DOCUMENTARIES FOR 2017
Listed by US Box Office Gross only. Linked titles leads to reviews.
Oscar finalists are in bold
🔺 = still in theaters (Note: Figures are as of 01/21/2018)
1. BORN IN CHINA $13.8 (April 21st)
As is often the case these days, a Disneynature title tops the chart. However, the figures for these Earth Day releases are diminishing. This one about pandas is the lowest-grossing of the seven Disneynature docs to be theatrically released since Earth in 2009 (so, not including The Crimson Wing: Mysteries of the Flamingo which went curiously unreleased in America). Still, this is a great figure for a nature documentary and as long as they keep churning them out hopefully people keep going in at least these modest numbers.
2. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO $7.1 (February 3rd)
One of the lone bright spots among the first half of the year for arthouses was this Oscar-nominated James Baldwin doc. We may grimace when distributors keep films from the general public, but Magnolia were smart to see they not only had a very likely Oscar contender on their hands (it should have won, but that's not what we're here to discuss), but that there's no way for these films to thrive among the end-of-year prestige glut...
Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 11:00AM by Nathaniel R
As a self-confessed crazy cat lady, I'm not sure why it took me so long to see the Turkish documentary Kedi. But it's fitting that I finally saw it late last night. I didn't even realize until this morning that I had ushered in National Cat Day with the streetcats of Istanbul. Since I am not a frequent documentary-watcher (unlike Glenn) I tend to only see them when the subject matter really intrigues me or if awards season comes calling...
Kedi, Oscars (17), Turkey, cats, documentaries Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 3:00PM by Glenn Dunks
Every year the mammoth New York based documentary film festival DOC NYC announces a program of films titled the “Short List”. These are films they describe as "[feeling] like worthy contenders for the Oscar short list based on festival accolades, reviews, box office”, culled from a longer list by means of “evaluating what titles appear to have momentum.”
The DOC NYC festival casts a very wide net for their selections with an annual line-up including films that have already screened in theatrical release or on television. Because of this, they’re able to claim to have played the last six winners of the Best Documentary Oscar. And in the four years since they began the Short List, the only Oscar nominee to not feature in the Short List program is Virunga. It’s an impressive statistic if not a somewhat deflating one knowing that this year’s nominees are likely somewhere to be found in this list of 15. But that's the Oscar prognastication game for you and we all love to play along so it's worth mentioning.
THE FINAL YEAR (Greg Barker)
There’s still about two months until the Academy release their own shortlist of 15 from the estimated 130 titles that will be submitted. But for now, let’s take a look at what DOC NYC are hedging their bets on...
Sunday, March 12, 2017 at 5:00PM What did you see this weekend?
check out that monster-sized beard on KONG SKULL ISLAND director Jordan Vogt-Roberts!
After catching up on TV shows like Big Little Lies and Feud, I went to Kong: Skull Island with a friend. Afterwards I eagerly read Chris's review, nodding a long at most of it. It's an easy-sit with surprising charm (mostly by way of John C Reilly's ad libbing... he seriously saves the movie from its paint-by-numbers blockbuster strategy) but wow was it disposable. Will anyone remember anything about it in a year's time?
And this to build a whole franchise on? Not too many of my audience members stayed for the stinger after the credits but that it was an enjoyable visual tease of other iconic kaiju like Godzilla, Ghidra, and Mothra. While the film opened at #1 it seems likely that Warner Bros was looking for much bigger numbers to launch a whole franchise on. The last installment of Godzilla, for example, opened to over $90 million. Perhaps by pairing them in Kong vs Godzilla (due in 2020) they can get closer to $100? Box Office charts for the weekend and some related news items are after the jump...
Godzilla, John Wick, Kedi, King Kong, box office 