Editor’s note: Deadline presents the 34th episode of its video series Take Two, in which Pete Hammond and Todd McCarthy tackle the artistry of films. Each has reviewed and written about the craft for decades and built a remarkable breadth of knowledge of films past and present. What we hoped for when we asked them to do this was a concise, mature and thoughtful conversation comparable to what we saw from Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.
This week we examine the explosion of documentary features now hitting the festival, theatrical, and streaming world. Telluride had the largest number of them (over 20) in its history, even stretching the limits of how to play them all. Venice chose one, All The Beauty And The Bloodshed for its top prize, the Golden Lion, only the second time in that fests’ history a documentary has won over the jury. Toronto and New York and London festivals are full of them too. A documentary will also be opening the AFI Fest this year. We look at the reasons why docus are all the rage, and whether too much is too much. Plus we pick some of our favorites of this year’s impressive crop for Documentary Features from which the Oscars will have to whittle down to just five nominees.
Click the link above to watch our conversation.
Hammond has been Deadline’s Awards Columnist for the past decade, covering what now seemingly is the year-round Oscar and Emmy seasons. He is also Deadline’s Chief Film Critic, having previously reviewed films for MovieLine, Boxoffice magazine, Backstage, Hollywood.com and Maxim, as well as Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, for which he was a contributing editor. In addition to writing, Hammond also hosts KCET Cinema Series and the station’s weekly series Must See Movies.
McCarthy is a veteran trade publication film critic, columnist and reporter who has also written several acclaimed books and documentary films. He served two stints on the staffs of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and extensively covered film festivals internationally for both publications. His film Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography won the best documentary prizes from the New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics associations, and he won an Emmy for writing the documentary Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer. He also directed the documentaries Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient and Forever Hollywood.
