1ST EVER CRITICS' CHOICE DOCUMENTARY AWARDS: NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED

Well, well, well! Who'd have expected this? The 2016-17 awards season kicks off extra early this year, as the Broadcast Film Critics Association announces its nominees for its first ever Critics' Choice Documentary Awards. Previously, the BFCA had simply handed out one award for Best Documentary at their annual movie awards ceremony; like any organization desperate to remain relevant, several significant changes have been made to the Critics' Choice awards in recent years, mainly of questionable character, but this new development is a promising one. That's one fewer award to chuck out during the commercial breaks on their hopeless televized awards ceremony, and several more awards for documentary filmmaking, ever underappreciated by audiences. As a further sign of the blurring of the lines between film and TV, these awards feature projects from both media. Award winners will be declared at a ceremony on the 3rd of November. Check it all out below:

Best Documentary Feature

13th

Cameraperson

Fire at Sea

Gleason

Life, Animated

O.J.: Made in America

Tickled

Tower

Weiner

The Witness

Best Direction of a Documentary Feature

Ezra Edelman (O.J.: Made in America)

Ron Howard (The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years)

Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson)

Keith Maitland (Tower)

Clay Tweel (Gleason)

Roger Ross Williams (Life, Animated)

Best Song in a Documentary Feature

Tori Amos - 'Flicker' (Audrie & Daisy)

Common, Karriem Riggins and Robert Glasper - 'Letters to the Free' (13th)

Sharon Jones - 'I'm Still Here' (Miss Sharon Jones!)

Mike McCready - 'Hoping and Healing' (Gleason)

J. Ralph and Sting - 'The Empty Chair' (Jim: The James Foley Story)

Sia - 'Angel by the Wings' (The Eagle Huntress)

Best First Documentary Feature

Otto Bell (The Eagle Huntress)

David Farrier and Dylan Reeve (Tickled)

Adam Irving (Off the Rails)

Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg (Weiner)

James D. Solomon (The Witness)

Wang Nan Fu (Hooligan Sparrow)

Best Music Documentary

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years

Gimme Danger

Miss Sharon Jones!

The Music of Strangers

Presenting Princess Shaw

We Are X

Best Political Documentary

13th

Audrie & Daisy

Newtown

O.J.: Made in America

Weiner

Zero Days

Best Sports Documentary

Dark Horse

The Eagle Huntress

Gleason

Fantastic Lies

Jackie Robinson

Keepers of the Game

O.J.: Made in America

Most Innovative Documentary

Cameraperson

Kate Plays Christine

Life, Animated

Nuts

Tower

Under the Sun

Best Documentary Feature: TV / Streaming

13th

Amanda Knox

Audrie & Daisy

Before the Flood

Fantastic Lies

Holy Hell

Into the Inferno

Jim: The James Foley Story

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures

Rats

Best Ongoing Documentary Series

30 for 30

Frontline

Last Chance U

Morgan Spurlock Inside Man

POV

This Is Life with Lisa Ling

Best Limited Documentary Series

The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth

The Eighties

The Hunt

Jackie Robinson

O.J.: Made in America

Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music

Best Director: TV / Streaming

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures)

Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn (Amanda Knox)

Ava DuVernay (13th)

Werner Herzog (Into the Inferno)

Morgan Spurlock (Rats)

Fisher Stevens (Before the Flood)

Best First Feature: TV / Streaming

Everything Is Copy (Jacob Bernstein and Nick Hooker)

Holy Hell (Will Allen)

Mavis! (Jessica Edwards)

My Beautiful Broken Brain (Sophie Robinson and Lotje Sodderland)

Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four (Deborah Esquenazi)

Team Foxcatcher (Jon Greenhalgh)

REVIEW - TICKLED (DAVID FARRIER AND DYLAN REEVE)

A crass comedy made by a pair of cocky dudebros, Tickled is a remarkable movie - or rather, a movie with a remarkable story - whose character is almost entirely forgiven by its premise and its content. David Farrier and Dylan Reeve are too sure of their sense of humour to sense that their light tabloid touch doesn't penetrate to the heart of that story, but their witty tone is engaging and their journalistic technique is adequately thorough to permit the viewer to penetrate at will. Though unwilling to delve into the sad, strange murk of American morality, Farrier and Reeve never fail to acknowledge its insidious presence as the driving force behind the narrative - a narrative which, as with all who conduct an investigation, they're only ever tracing backward, back to its source. Not a thoughtful film, Tickled is at least a highly thought-provoking one. The directors spend their spare time then (and it actually seems to have been spare time) in fleshing the film out with extended asides, like supporting material built up into a leading part. If Tickled feels at times like a newspaper article adapted into a documentary feature, it's worth considering that it might have worked better as the former. As sensational a story as this is, and as transfixing as it remains even after it has concluded (in the filmmakers' opinions), there's less to it than the film makes of it. Greater psychological inquiry would have made a fine solution, but that's not what our cocky dudebros had in mind, long before being confronted with the true nature of their project. What we get, though, is tabloid trash of the highest order: a tabloid treasure.

TICKLED TRAILER

Say what? I would attempt to explain what I think the documentary Tickled is about, but then I've only just heard of it. I have seen the above trailer, alas, and I'm still pretty far from certain; it appears to reveal rather a lot, but every bit of it whets the appetite for what looks like one of the year's most fascinating docs. Out in the US on the 17th of June. If you want to know nothing going in, I'd recommend steering well clear of this trailer - it'll only intensify your anticipation, but it may threaten to spoil the experience a little. May threaten. I only think I know what Tickled is about...