AJ Schnack has posted the Academy’s shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature nomination. As expected (at least, by me), Ellen Kuras’ The Betrayal, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, and Sundance winners Man on Wire and Trouble the Wire all made the cut. It’s also nice to see a few smaller films on the list, including In a Dream and They Killed Sister Dorothy. But there are also a few notable omissions, including Religulous and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, both of which had their semi-secret shortlist qualifying runs at the Creative Entertainment Coliseum Quad on 181 Street in the nosebleed section of New York City. Coincidence?!?? Probably! (For what it’s worth, Expelled, Religulous‘ political polar opposite, also failed to make the cut.)

The full list can be found here. Expect chatter and analysis in the days to come (probably not least from the snubbed Bill Maher).

If you opened up a movie trade publication or read a movie-focused blog between October 2007 and February 2008 the odds are good you saw at least one story about how the massive influx of Iraq War-themed films that were being released (The Kingdom, In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, etc) were not only all failing but were causing havoc in the independent film world.

Their less than fantastic box-office success was not always attributable to the quality of the movie. Nor was it always to do the audience’s perceived lack of interest in movies about our current military situation. But these were easy journalistic hooks on which to hang a story and so became part of our entrenched conventional wisdom.

Indeed there were some high-quality films released about this subject matter in the last year or so that are deserving of a broader audience. But release patterns don’t always line up with audiences. That’s why the appearance of films such as Heavy Metal in Baghdad on distribution sites like SnagFilms (a Spout partner) is so important: by flattening the distribution field to allow for anywhere, anytime viewing, the audience (at least that portion of it that’s tuned into online viewing, a percentage that’s growing steadily) can find movies that will interest them regardless of whether or not it’s playing at their local multiplex.

…Read more

The night before Sony Pictures Classics planned to open Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure in two theaters the Tribeca Film Festival hosted a screening of the film, followed by a conversation between Morris and Jarhead author Anthony Swofford.

Beat to the festival circuit by over a year by Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (which debuted at Sundance 2007 and later screened on HBO), Morris’ two-hour dissection of the Iraqi prison schedule retreads a fair bit of ground that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely and/or seen the previous film. But where Kennedy was primarily concerned with depicting the psychological climate that led to the abuses (of both detainees and power) and their photographic documentation, Morris is more concerned with revealing the discrepancy between what those iconic photographs seem to be documenting, and what the testimony of the indicted soldiers suggests is closer to the truth. “We looked at the photographs and thought we knew everything about Abu Ghraib,” Morris said after the screening. “We knew nothing.” …Read more

• At the IFC Blog, Alison Willmore unpacks the wildly divisive buzz surrounding Filth and Wisdom. “On one side is the urge to wield the long knife one’s probably been sharpening since the film’s presence at the festival was announced, and on the other is, perhaps, that wild contrarian compulsion to hold up the sure-to-be-maligned film as a misunderstood masterpiece.” Meanwhile, Jurgen Fauth defends his positive exit Twitter.
• Mike Jones has the winners of the Teddys, Berlinale’s juried queer film prizes. Matt Dentler got the news via a call from winner Olaf de Fleur, whose The Amazing Truth about Queen Raquela will be making its US premiere at SXSW next month. See a “making of” short above.
• At Salon, Stephanie Zacharek is less than impressed with Shine a Light and Standard Operating Procedure, but she found God in Fernando Eimbcke’s Lake Tahoe.

• Deals, deals, deals: Strand has acquired Bruce LaBruce’s gay zombie satire Otto or Up With Dead People; Miramax will release Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky in North America.
• David Hudson gives the Leigh film, which he calls “the only real out-n-out comedy to screen in Competition so far,” a B+. More letter grades at the link.
• AJ Schnack has a round-up of reviews of Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure. He’s found two raves to offset Todd McCarthy’s almost-pan.

The biggest news of the day thus far coming out of the Berlin Film Festival? Madonna’s directorial debut screened…and it wasn’t that bad. Let’s go to the Twitters:

IDrinkYourMilkshake.com mastermind Jurgen Fauth manages to squeeze a headline and a rating into 140 characters: “Berlinale Shocker: Madonna’s Filth and Wisdom not awful at all! ***” And Andrew Grant of Benten Films/Filmbrain fame more or less concurs. “Madonna’s directorial debut Filth and Wisdom could use more of both, but surprisingly it aint half bad!”

Of course, there could be some crazy festival alchemy in the works here––as we know, the critical crowds have been somewhat underwhelmed by the competition offerings thus far, and it would be hard to imagine a film for which expectations could have been any lower. But still, it’s rather heartening to hear that an aging, walking punchline of a pop star can still swoop in to an international film festival and steal attention away from an apparently mediocre issue film directed by a name-brand, Oscar winning filmmaker. Hooray for meritocracy!

Above: a sample of Madonna’s recent musical output. I saw the title and really hoped it was a cover of the Van Halen song, but alas…

On today’s edition of FilmCouch, Paul and Kevin referenced Errol Morris in their discussion of Charles Ferguson’s even-tempered (yet incendiary) documentary, No End in Sight. So I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you to the most recent post on Zoom, Morris’ New York Times blog, which he filed this past Wednesday. Perhaps this is where it should be noted that although technically, Zoom is published in blog format, Morris is really using it as a platform to release long, critical essays on photography about once a month.

The August installment is about the infamous image of the hooded figure standing on a box at Abu Ghraib. Morris has done much research and rumination on this subject, as his next film, S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure, uses issues surrounding representation and photographic evidence as jumping off points to examine the events at Abu Ghraib within the larger context of the war on terror.

In this latest post on Zoom, Morris discusses a bizarre case of mistaken identity associated with that photograph. One Iraqi prisoner, who was given the nickname Clawman, told the NY Times that it was him under the hood; he even, according to Morris, “printed business cards with a drawing of the hooded-man displayed next to his name.” Later, it was discovered that Clawman was not actually the man in the photograph–the soldier in charge of watching him said that Clawman was never placed on a box, and in fact was a large enough man that “If Clawman had been put on a box, he would have crushed it” — and the NY Times published a retraction.

Morris explains that one of the reasons why Clawman’s story was able to fly was because the Times ran a photo with their story in which Clawman’s own, slightly deformed left hand was cropped out of frame. The actual photo of the man in hood is blurry and his fingers appear to be curled in. If you saw it juxtaposed with language professing it to be a photograph of a man with a deformed hand, you’d that claim accept at face value. As Morris puts it,

Photography presents things and at the same time hides things from our view. It allows us to not-see at the same time that it allows us to see. But language plus photography provides an express train to error.

The photograph should be a constant reminder of how we can make false inferences from pictures. And of how pictures and language can interact to produce falsehood.

The problem was not a lack of research. Yes, there was archival material that could have cast suspicion on the claim that Clawman was the Hooded Man. But the mistaken identification was driven by Clawman’s own desire to be the iconic victim, to be the Hooded Man, and our own need to believe him. It is an error engendered by photography and perpetuated by us. And it comes from a desire for “the ocular proof.” A proof that turns out to be no proof at all.

You can read the full story here. At the end, Morris thanks readers for their feedback and says he “intends to respond”, so if you have a question for the man you may want to leave it in the Zoom comments.