The documentary winners of the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced on Sunday night.
Best Documentary Feature
Taxi to the Dark Side
Alex Gibney and Eva Orner
Best Documentary Short Subject
Freeheld
Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth
Reactions from the blogosphere are slowly trickling in. First, a shout-out to our own Tom Roston, who was right on the money with his prediction that Alex Gibney would take home the top honors for the feature category (view the trailer on YouTube). The Human Rights Campaign commends Cynthia Wade for the winning short, Freeheld, and posted links to an interview with her on the HRC XM Radio show “The Agenda with Joe Solmonese” a few weeks ago. And here’s their acceptance speech.
Over at Salon, writers Andrew O’Heir and Cintra Williams muse that the nominees for the documentary category really reflect the Academy’s distrust of the current administration. Williams felt the event reeked of “American self-loathing,” quoting Gibney’s acceptance speech urging the audience to “hope we can turn this country away from the dark side.”
But overall, a lot of commentary seems to be focusing on the ceremony itself: apparently it was the least-watched Oscars broadcast in recorded history (Reuters), and the New York Times wonders why.