Oscar Nominations: Documentaries

The nominations were announced for the Oscars yesterday. I’ve been seeing fewer feature films lately, but I do manage to catch more documentaries. Of the five nominees, I’ve only seen two so far, but I plan to try to see all of them if I can before the Academy Awards are handed out on February 25.

The nominees for Best Documentary are:

  • Deliver Us From Evil
  • An Inconvenient Truth
  • Iraq in Fragments
  • Jesus Camp
  • My Country, My Country

It’s nice to see that documentary film is serving some of its most important purposes in these films: to bear witness, and to kick us in the conscience. It’s interesting to note that two films deal with Christianity (both deal with forms of toxic Christianity, in my opinion), two deal with the Iraq war, and one with a global crisis. No uplifting films, this year, sadly. Times are tough.

If you’ve seen any of these, what did you think? Who’s your bet to win? My money is on Al Gore’s sobering PowerPoint presentation on climate change. Not the most creatively filmed, but certainly the most urgent, and it managed to present information in an entertaining and mostly guilt-free way that made me want to make some changes to the way I live.

UPDATE: In a bit of cross-blog linkery, I’ve listed the losers in this category for the past few years over at Runner-Up! Check ’em out!

Top Gear Rolls On

Top Gear is one of those shows only the British could make. It’s about cars, ostensibly, but it’s more about the camaraderie and one-up-manship of its three hosts, which is really what makes it so enjoyable to me.

After being introduced to this wonder last year at SXSW by the ravings of Kevin and Porter, I begin to watch it. But I was horrified by the news that in September of last year, host Richard Hammond was almost killed while driving a jet-powered dragster. Happily, he’s made a remarkable recovery and the show, despite my fears, has not been cancelled.

Top Gear also publishes a very popular magazine and in the February issue, they’re actually publishing photos of the crash. The first episode of the next series will air on January 28 in the UK, and they’ll be showing footage. I’m not sure if I feel this is in poor taste or not. I suppose that as long as Richard is there hosting the programme, then it doesn’t really matter. Welcome back, Hamster!

NOTE: The BBC News web site has posted the pictures, for the truly morbid among you.

Seek And Ye Shall Find

I’ve realized that switching to WordPress has broken all my archive links. If you arrive here via Google and are not at the page you’re expecting, please use the nifty live search box in the top right corner and you will be whisked away to the place you want to be. It’s that simple!

Dear Movable Type

Dear Movable Type,

Remember a few years ago when our relationship was fresh? And I wrote a Dear Blogger letter? Well, I’m sorry to say that I’m doing it again. I think we should go our separate ways.

It’s been a great four and a half years. In fact, it’s the longest relationship I’ve had with any blogging platform. But I have to admit that I’ve been fooling around for a while with someone else. And although it will be hard losing my relationship with you and your family, it’s probably best if we make a clean break.

If I’m honest, I’d have to say that you kind of let yourself go once we were together. You were always a bit slow, but you’d become kind of bloated, and trying to communicate with you had become a chore.

I’m not saying this new relationship will last forever. I think I’ve realized that it’s unwise to commit, though I’m willing to see where this goes. But I do want to say thank you. We’ve gone through some crazy stuff together, good times and bad, and you’ll always be a part of my life.

Now, let’s just say goodbye. No tears. Just goodbye.

Bloggers Show The Better Way

I just heard that the new chairman of Toronto’s transit commission (slogan: “The Better Way”) has asked bloggers to improve the commission’s “abysmal” website. This is potentially good news, but I hope these wizards of the web are willing to go in and get their hands dirty rather than just complain. The site hasn’t been updated since it was designed back in 1998 and it takes far too long to find even the most basic information.

There are some very talented web designers and developers in our city who could make a real contribution and I hope that this project raises the profile of this sort of citizen activism. It would be nice, though, if the TTC recognized the value of this kind of work and actually paid somebody to redesign the site. So far, the readers of BlogTo, Torontoist, and Spacing magazine have become involved.