The race for the Best Documentary Oscar just got a bit more official as the shortlist of nominees was released.  The lucky (and well made) docs are:

“At the Death House Door“
“The Betrayal“ (Nerakhoon)
“Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh“
“Encounters at the End of the World“
“Fuel“
“The Garden“
“Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts“
“I.O.U.S.A.“
“In a Dream“
“Made in America“
“Man on Wire“
“Pray the Devil Back to Hell“
“Standard Operating Procedure“
“They Killed Sister Dorothy“
“Trouble the Water“

My personal favorites of the bunch (I’ve admittedly only seen 4) are Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World and Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure.

Click on any of the titles above to learn more about the films and be sure to takepart with TakePart’s social action for Standard Operating Procedure because not only is it an awesome doc, it also encourages you to get involved and make the world a better place!

Paramount Pictures has just announced that they are pushing the release date of ‘The Soloist’ back from Thanksgiving weekend to March 13th.   The news comes as a disappointment for those of us looking forward to the film’s release and the Oscar buzz will have to hold off until 2009, as it will miss this year’s cut-off.   It also leaves me with only two turkey day releases to bring grandma to: a vampire fantasy flick or a Disney dog movie.   I suppose they’re better choices then Blood Diamonds.   Grandma’s reaction: “Mary Poppins it ain’t”.

Check back here for updates, but in the meantime takepart with the social action campaign for The Soloist.

May Day was first celebrated in the U.S. when, in 1886, 300,000 workers walked off their jobs to demand an eight hour workday.You may not know that because while many countries officially recognize the holiday, and almost all countries celebrate it, the U.S. spends May first celebrating Loyalty Day, and National Day of Prayer. Church State non-separation and blind patriotism are a lot more palatable than workers’ rights, humane working conditions, an eight hour work day and other radical notions.
So I say, viewers of the world, UNITE! Celebrate May Day by watching great movies about the workers’ movement. Here are the top 10 May Day movies.

1. Bread and Roses (2000) directed by Ken Loach and starring Pilar Padilla, Adrien Brody, Elpidia Carrillo, Jack McGee, is the story about an undocumented woman from Mexico who becomes involved in a campaign to unionize the janitors in a sleek Los Angeles high-rise.

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Richard Widmark, who debuted in Kiss of Death died at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, after a long illness. He was 93 and is survived by his wife, Susan Blanchard, and his daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, who was married to baseball player Sandy Koufax. Widmark would win an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in Kiss of Death as Tommy Udo, who enjoyed pushing old ladies down the stairs.

But in real life, Widmark who made over 75 films, was a great guy. Widmark was embarrassed to play the racist character in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out and would apologize to Sidney Poitier, with whom he became friends, after shooting scenes. The film was critical of of racism.

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The takepart.com blog went live a few months ago with 5 bloggers and 1 goal: report on media inspiring social change.

Here are some of our favorites and yours:

1. Top 10 Dystopian Future Films Telling Us to Act Now!
2. Top 10 Oscar Best Picture Winners That Inspire
3. Top 10 Recent Releases That Inspire Social Change
4. Top 10 Internet Videos Featuring Celebrities Advocating for a Cause
5. The Top 10 Movie Characters That Made a Difference
6. Sheryl Crow’s Apocalyptic Peak Oil Song
7. (Some Of) The Decade’s Best Portrayals of Women in Film
8. Hallelujah For American Idol, Jeff Buckley & Leonard Cohen
9. Bamboo Laptop: Will Apple Be Green With Envy?
10. Solar Powered Soldiers Wear A Uniform With Built-In Batteries

Join TakePart.com and let us know what you find most inspiring!

Even though I love Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There and find Cate Blanchett’s performance in the film nothing short of amazing, I was extremely excited to see Tilda Swinton win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Michael Clayton last night. I have long been an admirer of Swinton and her work in such films as Young Adam and The Deep End. The first role of hers that made me a true fan was her outstanding performance as the forever young Orlando in Sally Potter’s film by the same name.

Based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, Orlando follows the story of a young man who’s told “Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old” by Queen Elizabeth I. And he does not, he manages to live 400 years and never age a day. Swinton’s turn as the male Orlando is not the only gender-bending performance of the piece, Quentin Crisp portrays Elizabeth I and halfway through the film Orlando adds a letter to his pronoun and becomes a she, proclaiming :

“Same person. No difference at all… just a different sex.”

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Since the Academy Awards coincide with Black History Month, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight the top 10 black actors who have won Oscars for Best Actor/Actress in a Leading Role. So Hollywood–which harbors, aids and abets, politically-correct, identity-politics-spouting, hand-out giving, limousine liberals–can finally shut up about the so-called “racism” and all the other fake “isms” they claim exist and need to be addressed. Here’s the list of black Academy Award Winners for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Leading Role, in chronological order.

1. 1963: Sidney Poitier wins for his role as Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field, becoming the first African-American actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.

1964-2000: Lots of white winners.

2. 2001: Denzel Washington wins for his role as civil rights luminary and martyr Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, wins for his role as Rubin Carter, the real life legendary boxer, convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, who overcomes the racist criminal justice system, police corruption and brutality, and proves his innocence through his persuasive and passionate autobiography in Hurricane, for his role as the corrupt, criminal, violent, lecherous cop, Alonzo Harris, in Training Day.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Several topics really stood out this week, including the Oscars as social advocacy inspiration, civil rights and Black History Month, and lots of hot news on entertainment going Green. Check out our most popular posts of the week on these subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Happy Belated “Freedom to Marry” Week!

Rosa and Raymond Parks: Valiant Valentine #5

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Nicole:

Top 10 Oscar Picks to Inspire Social Action

Cornel West: Black Thoughts On Black History Month

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Giulia:

H&M’s “Fashion Against AIDS”

Ed Begley Jr. Goes Green

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Gina:

Top 10 Best Picture Winners That Inspire

Remixing “Chicago 10″

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Kerry:

How To Set the World On Fire Without Burning Out

Eco-Brokers Cater to Green Homebuyers

Yesterday I talked about a few of the Best Supporting Actor nominees that I thought needed a bit more attention, today I’m going to look at a film that is hidden away in four categories, but also deserves more attention - Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Nominated for “Best Adapted Screenplay”, “Best Cinematography”, “Best Editing” and “Best Director” for Julian Schnabel, the film is clearly of great technical merit, but more than that, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of the most inspiring films I have seen in sometime.

An experiment in form and point of view, Schnabel tells the true story of Jean-Dominque Bauby, the editor of French Elle who had a paralyzing stroke at the age of 47, resulting in “locked in syndrome.” Bauby was only able to communicate by blinking his eye but managed to write a book about his life and experience as a prisoner of his own body.

Schnabel used a swivel and tilt lens to tell much of the story through our main character’s perspective. In this way, everyone is Jean-Do’s world stares right into the camera and we experience what is happening just as Jean-Do did, with characters out of our line of sight more often than not. About halfway through, we also begin to see things from an objective POV, just as Jean-Do begins to find his own way to live.

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In honor of the Oscars and documentary, I’ve been looking at all of the nominees for Best Documentary. With the awards on Sunday, it’s time to focus on the last nominee, Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight. An investigation into America’s invasion of Iraq, the film goes in depth to figure out who was behind the invasion and what they were thinking. Ferguson puts his doctorate in political science to good use and creates one of the more succinct arguments against the US presence in Iraq.

The film is said to be more narrow in focus than other documentaries that focus on Iraq, but I tend to agree with A.O Scott’s review in The New York Times, when he says that:

It might be argued that since Mr. Bremer ( L. Paul Bremer III), Mr. Rumsfeld (Donald Rumsfeld) and Mr. Wolfowitz (Paul Wolfowitz) declined to appear in the film, Mr. Ferguson was able to present only one side of the story. But the accumulated professional standing of the people he did interview, and their calm, detailed insistence on the facts, makes such an objection implausible.

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