Bowling for Columbine, hands down, the best FILM of the year, let
alone the best documentary. Too bad it couldn't have been nominated
for both, but I don't see how it cannot win best documentary.
There's no reason it couldn't have gotten both, and
the studio apparently made a campaign for it.
As for how it could not win, alas, it's quite possible.
The only people in the Academy who can vote for
documentaries are people who have seen all five
of the nominees. Thus, the distributor of any one
of the five films can only screen their film to
groups of people who would be inclined to vote for them, thus tilting the odds
in their favor. At the end of this review
of One Day In September, Roger Ebert talks about how
the producer of that film pulled tricks like that, and
pulled an upset over the better known Buena Vista Social Club.
(Luckily, One Day... turned out to also be a
much better movie, but still...)
Newsforge doesn't want to load on my end, so I
can't see the summary yet. I just hope and pray
that Blueboy
is involved somehow, or at least a debate about
the issue with Howard Hessemann.
Joel Seigel once did a review of "Benji" on the air, panning it in
every way he could. Then, as they were going to a commercial he said
"and now, it's time for this message."
Actually, this was Gene Shalit on the Today Show, who
made this statement after getting the commercial sign from his producer in the middle
of a positive review of the film, only to wind doubled over laughing when he saw himself
quoted on a marquee. (Alas, Snopes doesn't seem to have any information on this,
although a Google/Deja search did turn up a couple of attirbutions to Shalit but
none for Seigel.)
Remember a few (4?5?) years back when Garth Brooks was raising a big
stink about how used CDs were hurting musicians?
That was around 1993. Brooks was going to stop allowing stores
that sold used CDs to carry his releases, citing the fact that the sognwriters, etc, weren't getting paid on the resales (duh),
but he ultimately backed down on this after an uproar of some sort (Brooks BBQs at stored that would've been affected were mentioned, but no real details in any searches made - no daily music news sites in 1993, I guess. Memories of
reading about this on Fidonet through an Akron BBS come rushing back...)
This random scribbling didn't even get to the Blue Room, which we can infer was a police holding cell he got thrown into later.
Actually, I thought the Blue Room he was referring
to was the Big (Blue) Room. Allow me to quote:
Big Room: n. (Also `Big Blue Room') The extremely large room with the
blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black
ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found
outside all computer installations. "He can't come to the phone right
now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room."
Slashdot Mirror
In all of this, I never saw a link to the law itself. After finding the thing, maybe I can see why. IA-so-NAL...
As for how it could not win, alas, it's quite possible. The only people in the Academy who can vote for documentaries are people who have seen all five of the nominees. Thus, the distributor of any one of the five films can only screen their film to groups of people who would be inclined to vote for them, thus tilting the odds in their favor. At the end of this review of One Day In September, Roger Ebert talks about how the producer of that film pulled tricks like that, and pulled an upset over the better known Buena Vista Social Club. (Luckily, One Day... turned out to also be a much better movie, but still...)
Newsforge doesn't want to load on my end, so I can't see the summary yet. I just hope and pray that Blueboy is involved somehow, or at least a debate about the issue with Howard Hessemann.
Actually, I thought the Blue Room he was referring to was the Big (Blue) Room. Allow me to quote:
I could be wrong, though.