It Might Get Loud, Davis Guggenheim's docu-primer on how to be a guitar hero, as conveyed by three certified masters (U2's The Edge, The White Stripes' Jack White and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page), passed the seven-figure mark in box office gross, becoming the seventh doc to do so in 2009. The current U2 blockbuster tour may well have inspired fans to flock to the cinema to watch The Edge trade licks and riffs with his fellow axmen.

The final quarter of 2009 could play itself out as the Battle of the Michaels, with Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story having opened strongly in four theaters this past weekend (it currently has the highest per-screen average of any film this year, about $60,000), the Michael Jackson valediction, This Is It, destined to scorch the box office in its limited run, and the Next Michael Jordan, Lebron James, stoking the press junket circuit with the upcoming More Than A Game, about his national champion high school basketball team.

Here is the latest list of the top-ten grossing docs of 2009:

1) Earth                                               $32,011,576

2) Food, Inc.                                         $ 4,306,466

3) The September Issue                        $ 2,502,000

4) Waltz with Bashir                              $ 2,283,849

5) Valentino: The Last Emperor:             $ 1,755,134

6) Every Little Step                                $ 1,719,364

7) It Might Get Loud                              $ 1,133,000

8) Tyson                                              $    887,918

9) Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg                    $    790,402

10) The Cove                                       $    770,419

Source: www.boxofficemojo.com

The Documentary Channel® (DOC) announced an exclusive agreement with 7th Art Releasing to televise a collection of 10 flicks from the 7th Art library. The package includes an eclectic assortment of film festival favorites including Word Wars, The Happy Hooker: Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary and What Remains of Us.
In a statement, Udy Epstein, principal of 7th Art Releasing, said, “It's great to bring some of 7th Art's favorite films to The Documentary Channel where good docs are always appreciated and promoted through traditional and new media.  We value greatly the channel's dedication to documentaries.  And our filmmakers love the exposure." The 7th Art Releasing film package will premiere on DOC beginning in November 2009, with specific titles and telecast schedules to be announced at a later date.

Time to Pay Up
The free ride at Variety is coming to an end. As reported on Nikkie Finke and confirmed by PaidContent.org, Variety.com is planning on putting most of its online content behind a paywall next year. The site had done away with its paid-subscription model in early 2007 in order to grow their unique users and go the ad-supported route. Will be interesting to see what that means for those who frequently cite the trades (like us!)...it's no fun to post a link to something readers can't actually access. 

Life on Showtime is Dead
Luckily, This American Life still remains free on the radio...though you won't be able to watch it on Showtime anymore. As reported by FishbowlNY, At a Behind the Scenes event hosted at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y, Life host Ira Glass revealed that the Emmy-nominated and IDA award-winning series will not be continuing.

"Most journalism is about things that already happened, as it turns out," Glass said with a laugh. "But with television, you want to capture it while it's happening. Honestly, what the f**k -- you understand reality shows because it's so hard to make things happen."

This is It Trailer
We'll leave you with some eye candy: the trailer for Michael Jackson's This is It, the film compiled from rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's tour. Love him or hate him, you have to admit it: the man was damn talented. The film will be released by Sony on October 28 for just two weeks.    
Trailer trivia: At about 1:45 into the trailer, you'll hear a quick quote from Orianthi Panagaris, the young female guitar player who landed the coveted gig on the tour. Panagaris made an appearance at DocuWeeks when she came out to support the film Rock Prophecies and its subject, legendary rock photographer Robert Knight (read IDA's event coverage here).

Michael Moore is in love. It's an aching, make-you-do-crazy-things kind of love, including borrowing a Brinks truck and wrapping Wall Street in crime scene tape, attempting to make citizen's arrests of bankers, criss-crossing the country to woo his intended and even soliciting the advice of several priests and a bishop. He's got it bad.

This is all in an effort to convince the object of his desire that she's been misled and is shacking up with the wrong guy. Who is this muse who's stirred his soul and compelled him to make his latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, which opens today (September 23) in Los Angeles and New York, followed by a nationwide release October 2? "I love America," Moore declared, following a recent pre-release screening in Los Angeles.

It's clear from the movie that he's optimistic about his chances of courting the country and rescuing it from the clutches of the corporations and their bought-and-paid-for political spokesmodels and pundits. "The American people will do the right thing if given the information," he said.

Moore hopes his film will be a catalyst for the changes he thinks are necessary to get the country back on track. Not only does he want to get people into the theaters to see his film, he wants them to get involved "in this great country," he explained. "Democracy is not a spectator sport."

Some people might assume that this 127-minute motion picture journey is an anti-capitalism screed inspired by Karl Marx, but as usual, Moore draws heavily on that other Marx--Groucho--to drive home his points about the failings of our system. After commandeering a Brinks truck, he rolls into Wall Street to cordon off one of the temples of the moneychangers with yellow crime scene tape. He's there to make citizens' arrests and get the people's billions back from those we "rescued" with an unprecedented, ask-no-questions series of loans after they tanked the world's economies.

Moore talks to former Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, who now chairs the Congressional Oversight Committee, which is charged with figuring out where that money went. "The Treasury Department still will not tell her what the banks are doing with our money, or what they've done with it; there's no accountability whatsoever," Moore told the LA audience.

Moore is incensed by the contrast between the way banks treat someone seeking a loan and how they've been protected and been allowed to blithely ignore the public's interest in keeping track of our money. "If you ever try to get a loan, there's all the paperwork you've got to fill out, every personal question they ask you and all this back-up proof of what you're going to do with that loan from the bank," he bemoaned. "The wringer they put the average person through to get a measly ten or 20 thousand dollars...If you're a bank and you want bailout money, it's a two-page form with mostly white space, and three questions."

Making the film, Moore discovered some unexpected glimmers of hope. Approached by a New York City cop while he was stringing the crime scene tape around Wall Street, the filmmaker muttered under his breath, just loud enough for the officer to hear, that he'd be gone in a few minutes and that this was just a stunt for his movie. Hoping this would buy him a few minutes to get the shot and avoid arrest, he was shocked to hear the cop say, "Take all the time you need." Apparently, the police pension fund was decimated by the collapse of the stock market.

Once again, it's clear that Moore's brand of provocation is not about that dreaded "ism" we were schooled to abhor. It's about populism in the vein of such Depression Era luminaries as Will Rogers, Frank Capra and John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath, as opposed to the John Wayne collaborations), with a dose of some Preston Sturges' screwball comedy touches.

This was the era of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is credited with rescuing capitalism by restoring the people's confidence and creating a bulwark of regulations that would keep the system from self-destructing. He also worked to create the safety net of programs that would offer citizens some assurance of a better life. But what most have forgotten is that FDR wanted to take this even further with a second Bill of Rights--an "economic bill of rights" that would guarantee:

"The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment;

The right to a good education."

Moore's archive researchers dug up a long lost piece of film showing an aging Roosevelt introducing this proclamation to the American people, which was tacked on to his final State of the Union address, which he delivered January 11, 1945. Roosevelt was ailing and too weak to make the trek to Capitol Hill, so he spoke to the people by radio, but had a film crew standing by to record the ending. The President was preparing the country for the opportunities of a post-war world, and he believed, "All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won, we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being. America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens."

Moore contrasts this noble, sweeping vision with the onslaught of the Reagan Revolution, which was hellbent on dismantling the hard-won strictures of the Roosevelt era. While many are unwilling to speak ill of the dead, especially an icon like Reagan, Moore traces his transformation from B-movie hero and spokesman for General Electric into a semi-mythic figure whose public persona of decent, middle-American values was in marked contrast to his policies, which systematically undermined the protections wrought by Roosevelt and put us on the collision course that led to the recent economic collapse.

Defined benefit pension plans became 401Ks with no guarantees. Students had to borrow from banks to go to college. Unions were denigrated and broken, and jobs went overseas.  Real wages stagnated, and we became addicted to credit in order to keep up.

Being an equal opportunity skewerer, Moore gives Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush a drubbing for their roles in continuing to unravel the economic system. He doesn't spare the current occupant of the White House, who has appointed people Moore believes are the architects of the debacle to positions where they are responsible for cleaning up the mess.

"It's so bothersome that Geithner, Summers and Rubin are in charge," said Moore.  "Obama probably didn't understand what a derivative was, either, and was told that, ‘Well, these are smart guys; let's bring them in. They know what to do.' It's disheartening to see these three men in charge of our economy now."

To show us the human cost of these policies, Moore takes us inside the lives of people whose homes are being foreclosed. We see one family burning their furniture to earn a clean-up fee of $1,000 from the bank. It's heartbreaking, and you wonder where the mainstream media have been for the last couple of years. Instead of covering protests against health care reform, why aren't they embedded with those who are losing their homes because they've been crushed by a mountain of medical bills?

"Actually, the number one reason for people being foreclosed upon is because they don't have health insurance, and they've been paying medical bills and now they can't pay their mortgages," Moore maintained, citing a study authored by Elizabeth Warren when she was at Harvard. "Instead we hear, ‘This whole mess was caused by people who were living beyond their means and taking out these loans they shouldn't have been taking out and blah, blah, blah."

Moore is encouraged by the response he's received at screenings at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals and at venues across the country. He's also buoyed by the enthusiastic backing of Overture Films and Paramount Vantage, which are releasing Capitalism: A Love Story. "I'm going to have a larger opening than I've had for any film," said Moore.

Chris McGurk, CEO of Overture, has been a fan of Moore's ever since he saw Roger and Me 20 years ago. Several years later, while at MGM, he had the chance to buy Bowling for Columbine after seeing it at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. McGurk isn't afraid of the fact that Moore has a social agenda. "He's an incredibly bold filmmaker who asks the right questions, no matter what side of the issue you are on," McGurk said in a telephone conversation. Winning Academy Awards, garnering great reviews and selling a mountain of tickets and DVDs doesn't hurt either. 

According to McGurk, the secret to Moore's success is, "He tackles these documentaries in the way the best filmmakers tackle their non-documentaries--he's all about story and character. He latches on to people and ideas and weaves a story around them that is riveting." 

For Moore, success will be people getting involved in the political process after watching his film. "In these times now, we can't just be sitting back," Moore declared at the Los Angeles screening. But he's not starting a new organization. "There are already organizations that are fighting back, but they're small and they need mass support. Let's act like the majority. We have the power, right?"

If you do, you'll help Moore win back the love of his life--America. ;

Michael Rose is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker.

Following high-profile premieres in Venice and Toronto and a flurry of special screenings across the country, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story hits Los Angeles and New York City theaters September 23 through Overture Films and Paramount Vantage.

Here's the opener of a Documentary online article by Michael Rose that includes thoughts and musings from Moore and from Overture Films CEO Chris McGurk:

Michael Moore is in love. It's an aching, make-you-do-crazy-things kind of love, including borrowing a Brinks truck and wrapping Wall Street in crime scene tape, attempting to make citizen's arrests of bankers, criss-crossing the country to woo his intended and even soliciting the advice of several priests and a bishop. He's got it bad.

For the rest of the article, click here.

PBS took six News & Documentary Emmy Awards at the ceremony in New York City last night, with honors going to FRONTLINE, P.O.V., NOVA and Bill Moyers Journal. HBO added to its trophy case of Creative Arts and Primetime Emmys, with four, including two to the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side. The leading multi-award winning program was Travel Channel's Wild China, with three awards.

For the complete list of winners, click here.

OUTSTANDING CONTINUING COVERAGE OF A NEWS STORY‑‑LONG FORM

FRONTLINE: Bush's War (PBS)
Executive Producer: David Fanning
Producer/Director: Michael Kirk
Producer/Reporter: Jim Gilmore
Co‑Producer: Mike Wiser

OUTSTANDING INFORMATIONAL PROGRAMMING ‑- LONG FORM

NOVA: A Walk to Beautiful(PBS)
Executive Producer / Producer: Steve Engel
Senior Executive Producer: Paula Apsell
Senior Series Producer: Melanie Wallace Producer/Director: Mary Olive Smith
Co‑Producer: Allison Shigo
Director: Amy Bucher

OUTSTANDING HISTORICAL PROGRAMMING ‑-LONG FORM

Cinemax Reel Life: Nanking(HBO)
Producer/Director: Bill Guttentag
Producers: Michael Jacobs, Ted Leonsis
Co‑Producer: Violet Du Feng
Director: Dan Sturman

OUTSTANDING INTERVIEW

P.O.V.: Inheritance (PBS)

Producer/Director: James Moll
Producer: Christopher Pavlick
Executive Producers: Chris Malachowsky, Ryan Malachowsky, Simon Kilmurry

OUTSTANDING ARTS & CULTURE PROGRAMMING

HBO Documentary Films: The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not For Sale (HBO)
Executive Producers: Diana Holtzberg, Sheila Nevins
Supervising Producer: Sara Bernstein
Producer/Director: Jeff Stimmel

OUTSTANDING SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE PROGRAMMING

National Geographic Channel Presents: Five Years on Mars
Executive Producer: Howard Swartz
Producer/Director: Mark Davis
Senior Vice President, Production: Michael Cascio

BEST DOCUMENTARY

HBO Documentary Films: Taxi to the Dark Side (HBO
Executive Producers: Sidney Blumenthal, Don Glascoff, Robert Johnson, Jedd Wider, Todd Wider
Producer/Director: Alex Gibney
Producers: Eva Orner, Susannah Shipman
Co‑Producers: Blair Foster, Sloane Klevin

NEW APPROACHES TO NEWS & DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: DOCUMENTARIES

The Boys of Christ Child House (Freep.com/Detroit Free Press)
Producer/Senior Videographer: Brian Kaufman
Lead Photojournalist: Kathleen Galligan
Photojournalist: Regina Boone
Executive Producer: Kathy Kieliszewski
Reporter: Robin Erb
Video Executive Producer: Craig Porter
Managing Editor, Digital Media: Nancy Andrews
Web Producer: James Thomas

NEW APPROACHES TO NEWS & DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: ARTS, LIFESTYLE & CULTURE

Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica (Livehopelove.com)
Executive Producer: Jon Sawyer
Co‑Producers: Nathalie Applewhite, Stephen Sapienza
Correspondent: Kwame Dawes
Videojournalist: Doug Gritzmacher
Photojournalist: Joshua Cogan
Interactive Producer: Josh Goldblum

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: WRITING

Bill Moyers Journal: Essays ‑ Gilded Age, It Was Oil, Memorial Day (PBS)
Writers: Bill Moyers, Michael Winship

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: RESEARCH

HBO Documentary Films: Taxi to the Dark Side (HBO
Researchers: Salimah El Amin, Blair Foster

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: CINEMATOGRAPHY‑‑NATURE DOCUMENTARIES

Wild China: Heart of the Dragon (Travel Channel)
Camerapersons: John Aitchison, Mike Lemmon, Justin Maguire, Gavin Newman

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: CINEMATOGRAPHY

FRONTLINE: The War Briefing
Cameraperson: Timothy Grucza

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: EDITING

Wild China: Shangri-La (Travel Channel)
Editors: Andy Netley, Steve Olive

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: GRAPHIC DESIGN & ART DIRECTION

Illicit: The Dark Trade (PBS)
Art Director: Ricardo Andrade
Visual Effects Supervisor: Elizabeth Andrade
Animators: Wen Zhong Yuan, James Nidel
3D Animator: Chris Jennings

OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: MUSIC & SOUND

Wild China: Heart of the Dragon (Travel Channel)
Composer: Barnaby Taylor

James Longley, the Academy Award-nominated director of Iraq in Fragments and Sari's Mother, was named one of 24 MacArthur Fellows by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation yesterday. The Fellows will each receive a unrestricted grant of $500,000, amortized over the next five years. What's more, the grant requires no proposal, no application, no reporting, no stipulations--just the freedom and opportunity to continue to make a difference.  The rest of us can keep on dreaming--and fundraising...

"For nearly three decades, the MacArthur Fellows Program has highlighted the importance of creativity and risk-taking in addressing pressing needs and challenges around the globe," said MacArthur President Robert Gallucci in a statement "Through these Fellowships, we celebrate and support exceptional men and women of all ages and in all fields who dream, explore, take risks, invent, and build in new and unexpected ways in the interest of shaping a better future for us all."

Longley, who had been in Iran the past couple of years making a film about a junior high school in the village of Pul, witnessed the post-election uprisings in June (for more, click here.). For both Iraq in Fragments and Sari's Mother, Longley directed, produced, shot, edited and composed the score. His previous film, Gaza Strip (2001) captures life in that occupied Israeli territory, five months after the 2000 Intifada and around the election of Prime Minster Ariel Sharon. Of that film, he wrote, "My idea of a good documentary is a film that captures the most essential aspects of its subject, a film that shows rather than tells. I wanted to make a film that would convey not only the hard facts of life inside the Gaza Strip, but also the emotions, sensations and driving desires of the people I filmed. I made the film to fill a gap in our knowledge and a blind spot in our thinking about this conflict, but more than anything this film is an attempt to record the humanity of the people I met there, the thing that is impossible to tell in words."

Longley studied film at both Wesleyan University and All-Russian Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. His student documentary, Portrait of Boy with Dog, about a boy in a Moscow orphanage, earned a Student Academy Award in 1994. For more information about the filmmaker, click here.

Longley is the eighth documentary filmmaker to earn a MacArthur Genius Grant. The others include Edet Belzberg, Jon Else, Louis Massiah, Errol Morris, Stanley Nelson,  Marcel Ophuls and Frederick Wiseman. For more information about the Fellows Program, click here.

Bowing to international pressure, the Tokyo International Film Festival announced it will screen The Cove, a documentary about the annual dolphin hunt in Taij, at the nine-day event in October The Japan Times reported.

The film was initially rejected by TIFF and had inspired Taij's sister city of Broome in Australia to severe its relationship with the Japanese town. The controversy led to festival organizers to take special consideration when adding the film.

From The Japan Times:

When organizers on Wednesday announced the lineup for the 22nd annual film festival, TIFF Chairman Tom Yoda singled out The Cove, explaining the decision to include the documentary was made after the festival had reached an agreement with the movie's producers to take full responsibility should any problems arise from the screening.

"We had initially decided not to include this movie out of concern that it may bring controversy, but we have received a lot of international criticism," Yoda said.

"It's a really good day for dolphins and Japanese people," [The Cove] director Louie Psihoyos told The Japan Times by phone from Sweden. "Japanese people for the most part do not know about the high levels of mercury in dolphin meat. This film will hopefully once and for all settle the argument these animals shouldn't be eaten for food because of extremely high levels of mercury."

Get more information about TIFF here and The Cove here.

As part of our 2009 Doc U Seminar Series, the IDA is proud to present an Evening with Ondi Timoner on Thursday, Sept. 24 in Los Angeles.

Register for the event here!

Join us for a special evening with the two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner. Filmmaker who will discuss her latest film and share the story of her unprecedented success at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. This is your chance to ask one of our community's most celebrated artists your questions about production and the art and business of documentary filmmaking! You won't want to miss this fantastic opportunity.

Ondi Timoner is the only filmmaker to ever win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize twice--first for the critically-acclaimed DiG! (2004) and more recently in 2009 for We Live In Public that the New York Times called "riveting" and "a compelling cautionary tale." Timoner graduated from Yale University cum laude and founded Interloper Films in 1994. Her short film, Recycle (2005), was a winner at the ICG Awards, and screened at both Sundance and Cannes. She is currently directing and producing Cool It, a documentary which explores the issues of global warming from a socio-economic perspective as it relates to the immediate needs of the developing world.

We Live in Public opens at the NuArt Theater on September 24.
Visit www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com for more information.

Eddie Schmidt (moderator) is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, writer/producer, and commentator, as well as the Board President of the International Documentary Association (IDA). Feature credits include producing & co-writing the acclaimed IFC documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, producing and shooting HBO's powerful Twist Of Faith (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), and producing the groundbreaking teenage mosaic Chain Camera. All three films were released theatrically and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

*** Space is VERY limited, so be sure to reserve a seat soon!

A clip from the Doc U seminar with Robert Greenwald is available on our website:
http://www.documentary.org/content/video/7623
And on the IDA YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmR4pVM7HUw

IDA members: $35 advance purchase; $45 at the door
Non-members: $45 advance purchase; $55 at the door

Join IDA now! For discounted ticket prices and more!

While promoting Capitalism: A Love Story at the Toronto International Film Festival today Moore said that "Newspapers have slit their own throats. Good riddance."

Moore accused newspapers of following profits over what the readers want. He also had a zinger or two for the Republicans, saying that newspaper organizations supported GOP candidates who have discouraged reading and education with their policies. He predicted that daily newspapers would be a thing of the past in a coupe of years.

See the whole conference below. What do you think about Moore's comments? Sound off now!

Get the latest updates, news and reactions coming out of TIFF in our News on the Doc section here.

R. J. Cutler's The September Issue, which captures both the process of producing the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine and the intramural tension between Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Creative Director Grace Coddington, exceeded $1 million at the box office in its third week of release.  Following aan opening two-week run in New York City,. The film rolled out wide across the country-and pulled in over $700,000 over the weekend, for a cumulative gross total of $1,283,000, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. The September Issue is the sixth million dollar-grosser of 09, and with It Might Get Loud showing potential and Capitalism: A Love Story destined to join Michael Moore's trophy case of commercial successes, docs are looking to close out the decade relatively strongly--albeit in a platform of steadily declining promise.

Here's a list of the top grossing docs of 2009 to date:

1) Earth           $32,011,576

2) Food, Inc.   $ 4,205,402

3) Waltz With Bashir   $ 2,283,849

4) Valentino: The Last Emperor         $ 1,755,134

5) Every Little Step      $ 1,709,679

6) The September Issue  $1,283,000

7) Tyson          $ 887,918

8) It Might Get Loud               $ 802,000

9) The Wonder of It All            $ 744,298

10) The Cross: The Arthur Blessit Story         $ 741,557