In the time it took me to go to the kitchen and microwave my lunch, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just made it a lot easier to qualify for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination. Wasn’t that easy?

The current, much-discussed rules require features to screen at least once in at 14 cities in at least 10 states; these new rules, which will govern films released between now and August 31, 2008 for consideration at the Oscars in 2009, simply state that features “must run for a minimum of seven days in both Los Angeles County and the Borough of Manhattan.” This alone should be much more do-able for the average documentary filmmaker––and it’ll eliminate the need for a off-the-beaten-path, self-financed qualifying run like the one for Billy the Kid––but the Academy has also decided to allow digital submissions of short listed films, eliminating the once-mandatory (and costly) production of celluloid prints for semi-finalists.

You can read the full press release here. In other documentary news, AJ Schnack has a rundown of the year so far in documentary box office, and for all of the complaints that No End in Sight either failed to break through Iraq fatigue or was prevented from doing so, it’s interesting to see that it’s in second place for the year, behind Sicko.