The News: Doc Watchers Vote!

Frog eat frog: Manda Bala, one of the nine nominees for the Cinema Eye Honors Audience Award (Photo: City Lights Pictures)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

Some of today's movie news of note from around New York:

--Voting is officially open for the Audience Award at the first Cinema Eye Honors, celebrating a few of 2007's best documentaries that were generally overlooked by the draconian Academy Awards selection process. Among them: Manda Bala, In the Shadow of the Moon, King of Kong, Deep Water, Into Great Silence and Manufactured Landscapes, which are also joined by Oscar nominees No End in Sight and Sicko. You get one ballot, so make it count; the award winners will be announced March 18 at IFC Center.

--The callous cynic in me couldn't see too far past the marketing value while visiting the Be Kind Rewind storefront/filmmaking workshop at Deitch Projects last week in SoHo. Thank goodness for The L Magazine's Jesse Hassenger, who valiantly signed up a crew of friends, colleagues and total strangers to shoot his own short at the makeshift DIY soundstage. No online video is available, alas, but Undressing the Clothed Cowboy of Hoboken is there on the shelf for the next three weeks if you're in the mood for a doc about the Naked Cowboy's brother.

--NY Daily News film writer Joe Neumaier sent around word Monday that effective immediately, he is joining Elizabeth Weitzman on full-time critic duty. Neumaier replaces recently retired veteran Jack Mathews; perhaps as a means of informing you what to expect from your new taboid tandem, the NYDN celebrated the 75th anniversary of King Kong by republishing its original review from March 3, 1933: "[W]hen you leave Radio City, you know you've had a good time -- which is just what the imaginative men responsible for the movie meant you to have!," wrote Irene Thirer. "Photographically, by the way, King Kong is super-excellent."

--Also from the NYDN, and possibly worthy of their own Deitch Projects appointment: "A team of self-made paranormalists is offering to come over to your house in the middle of the night to chase away any unwanted spirits. ... The three, who call themselves Brooklyn Ghost Investigations, are otherwise unemployed."

Posted at March 4, 2008 8:33 AM