A Memorial for "In Memorium"

One last piece on an individual moment from Oscar night?

by Baby Clyde

They couldn’t have started off the In Memoriam segment of the 96th Annual Academy Awards, in a more sober fashion. Recently assassinated Russian opposition leader and subject of last year's Best Documentary winner Alexei Navalny appears on screen, speaking directly to the audience. It’s a bold, surprising opener, somewhat at odds with the slick, professional and ever so slightly dull show that made up the rest of the runtime. This grim reminder of a world outside the Hollywood bubble gives absolutely no indication of the calamitous 4 minutes we're about to endure...

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Oscar Ceremony in Review: 10 Moments To Cheer or Jeer At...

by Nathaniel R

"L Ron Hubba Hubba"

Like, Eric, who felt joyfully optimistic about the Oscars after the 95th Academy Awards, wrapped, I also had a good night. Did you? Overall it was a well produced, well paced, quite entertaining, and often moving night with good speeches and the requisite history being made. Now, in point of fact, history is always made at the Oscars. Each year of an institutional annual event that is super consistent in its approach (far more so than say the Grammys, BAFTAs, and Emmys which all change rules and category names so often that records and stats end up feeling blurry and mostly meaningless), will necessarily alter at least a few nooks and crannies of statistics and records. But we got a few true biggies last night: First Asian Best Actress winner, first film in half a century to take 75% of the acting prizes, first sci-fi action comedy to win the big prize.

But "it was a good time!" isn't much of a rundown of a three and a half hour glamorous event so herewith 8 things that stuck out for me, for better and worse, in no particular order...

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Oscar Volley: Best Documentary Feature captures the real world

Team Experience is teaming up to discuss each Oscar category. Here's Glenn Dunks and Baby Clyde...

GLENN: Hi Baby Clyde, are you ready to talk documentaries? I just published my best documentaries of the year feature here at The Film Experience so I am ready to tie this year's world on non-fiction in a bow.

Will Laura Poitras win a second Oscar to go with her Golden Lion?

First things first, what do you think of this year's batch of nominees for Best Documentary Feature? As is pretty common for this category as of late, I don't think there's a bad film in the bunch, with a good coverage of American and international fare. It's a line-up that even has the added bonus of featuring the best documentary of the year in its ranks (that would be Laura Poitras' All the Beauty and the Bloodshed). Last time that happened was just two years back with Collective so the category, for me, continues to remain strong and getting stronger as the number of contenders rises and rises...

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Doc Corner: 'Navalny' is the first Oscar contender of '22

By Glenn Dunks

What luck it is to be a filmmaker in the room at such moments of historic opportunity. Canadian director Daniel Roher has made one previous feature, a music bio-doc about The Band, which probably isn’t the sort of bellwether for somebody who is about to capture evidence of the plot to assassinate the political rival of Vladimir Putin. But here we are.

Because of that luck and whatever directorial smarts got him there, Roher and his film Navalny are surely very real contenders for the documentary Oscar, the first such major title of the year.

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