For Your Consideration

Two major Oscar controversies so far this year. And unlike the usual worship of the cult of the celebrity that the Oscars have become these stories actually have a bit of cultural depth to them.

First off is the list of shortlisted documentaries for the Oscars. Documentary filmmaker AJ Schnack teamed up with Indiewire to produce a second curated list, highlighting the serious oversights and deficiencies of the Oscar list. It was an amazing year for docs and it seems like the Academy was a bit asleep at the switch here.

Then the same sort of situation seemed to have occurred with the short list for Foreign Language Oscars. It's not that the films selected aren't good films cause they are but the Academy seems to be seriously missing out on the greater cultural trends. One example is Mexico's official selection being off the list when Mexican film is experiencing a brilliant renaissance. This cultural movement even has a name, La Proxima Ola.

Oscar needs to get its head on straight and realize that these two important directions in filmmaking (docs and international) need more consideration. As the Golden Globes clearly showed this year, the self congratulatory celebrity worship aspect is clearly the least important and shallowest aspect of Oscar.