... Did Grizzly Man get snubbed for Best Documentary?

I just finished it. It's one of the most emotional movie watching experiences i've had in years. I teared up three, four times at least. It's just incredible. It's enthralling. It's mesmerizing. It's infinitely disturbing. It's heartbreaking. And it features some of the best wild life footage i've ever seen.

And the Academy completely ignored it. What the hell?

It was never deemed eligible because of the (strict/stupid) academy rule regarding documentary that says to be eligible, a documentary cannot be dominated by an extensive amount of previously existing footage.

So in a sense, this is not a snub, but a technical/rule issue, like how BBM's song was deemed ineligible. Academy voters never had a chance to vote for Grizzly Man. I'm sure they would have if it's eligible.

Wow. That's completely ridiculous. It was good enough to get a Best Pic nom, too.

Welcome to my world Makeshift.

Yeah, that's ridiculous.

But it was out on a technicality. Some people, including Ebert, I believe, are still trying to paint this Grizzly Man snub as some sort of 'problem' with the Acadmey - that they're trying to be exclusionary to the more mainstream docs (a la 1994 with all the Hoop Dreams controversy).

But c'mon. Penguins got nominated, and look how mainstream that went. There's no problem. I'm sure if Grizzly Man hadn't been deemed ineligible it'd be up for a nomination right now.

Grizzly Man is airing tonight BTW, 8 EST?? on Discovery Channel

If extensive then that sounds like a good rule that they shouldn't get credit.

so how extensive was GM?

Damn, I missed the 8:00 showing, but looking through the schedule, Discovery Channel is playing it again at 1:00am! Gosh, I want to see it so bad that I might stay up that late just to watch it.

The only thing is the friggin' thing is 3 HOURS long! I didn't know that! Or does Discovery channel have commercials? I don't really know.

Either way I'd have to stay up from 1:00 to 4:00 am. Yikes. But I am still so tempted...

PEACE, Mike.

Hmmm, IMDB says it's 103 minutes. I doubt a documentary like this one would go on for over two hours.

So maybe it's not the same Grizzly Man? It says this in the info: "Examining the life of grizzly bear expert Timothy Treadwell, who spent 13 years in the Alaskan wildnerness studying the ferocious creatures." -- Is that the documentary, or something different?

And it does show it as playing from 1:00-4:00am.

PEACE, Mike.

That sounds exactly like Grizzly Man.

No, that is it.

It's probably playing with commercials, though...unedited.

Meaning they only get about 40 minutes per hour for the actual film...= about three hours with commercials.

EDIT:

actually, Grizzly Man is STILL playing at midnight EST. (though I think it just ended).

So either it didn't start at 8pm, or it's only 2 hr and they showed it back to back, or something. I dunno. But. Whatever. :o

I think with commercials, it will stretch the runtime to 2:20 hours, and then maybe they're going to have some extras.

If that's true, then I would be heading to bed around 3:00-3:20am, which isn't too bad. I can sleep in tomorrow.

PEACE, Mike.

I think they showed it back to back. Cuz it's only about half over now, at midnight, and when I checked it out at 11PM (or so) it was right towards the end (with the watch, that's the end, right?)

Either way, though, they are showing it again tomorrow night at 8pm est, too. So. Tivo it.

Well, unless the directory is wrong, no it's not. At 8:00 PM EST tomorrow, Mythbusters is playing. I actually checked already to see if it would play the next day, but no.

PEACE, Mike.

maybe in Canada...but on the very first page I see this:
"Tune in for the premiere on Discovery Channel on Friday, Feb 3, at 8 p.m. ET/PT and for the encore on Saturday, Feb 4, at 8 p.m. ET/PT."

Yeah, must be different where I live then.

PEACE, Mike.

They're adding some special after the movie, I believe.

I watched a bit of it tonight. The amount of commercials really lessens the impact of the film. I swear, there were commercials every five minutes.

Also, it seems to be a slightly different version than the DVD copy I saw a couple of days ago.

Yeah, the commercials really ruined the flow, so I think I'm going to watch the DVD before I officially grade the film.

But for now: Wow.

Also, I can totally see why the Academy decided to disqualify the doc. A lot of the awesome touches that are part of the film comes from the grizzly man himself and HIS work out there. Not that I would have disqualified it, but I can see why the Academy did.

PEACE, Mike.