Hurray for Hollywood!

Shocker! Waiting for Superman, the most heavily promoted documentary of all time, was snubbed for an Oscar nomination!

The film failed to get an Oscar nod, despite millions spent on making and promoting it by the privateers. Did Diane Ravitch's brilliant critique in the NY Review of Books have a negative effect?

Here's the first article in Movieline, back in November, that suggested her scathing review might hurt the film’s chances to win, but I don’t think anyone anticipated it would not be nominated.

Here’s the analysis by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post which followed, speculating whether Diane’s takedown might have an effect on its chance to grab the prize.

Clearly, if anything the movie should have been considered in the category of fictional drama instead; see why in my Huff Post column, Fact-checking Waiting for 'Superman': Documentary or Urban Myth? Here are other corrections from Choire Sicha,; the NY Times also revealed how the moviemaker had faked certain scenes.

Now, Inside Job appears to be the Oscar favorite in this category (& my own!) A similar film needs to be made about the “inside job” now being done to undermine and privatize public education.

Let's hope the failure of Waiting for Superman means the tide is turning, and that people are no longer going to by the empty propaganda foisted us by the Billionaire Boys Club.

Thanks to David Bellel for the brilliant illustration.

Diane knocks out Guggenheim from Oscar contention?

Diane Ravitch has written a superb critique of Waiting for Superman in the NY Review of Books that is already being hailed as damaging this film's prospects for an Oscar.
(See David Bellel's inspired illustration to the right; that's the film's director with a bloodied brow, Davis Guggenheim.)

Also check out the review by Shino Tanikawa in this week's Villager, and my take on the film's biases in the Huffington Post called The Blind Side, and what scenes an anti-Superman film would look like.

The best analysis of the money behind the film and the charter school movement in general, and how its hedge fund supporters are making millions off charter school endowments, is provided by Barbara Miner of Rethinking Schools on the "Not Waiting for Superman" Facebook page.

And this video, called the Inconvenient Truth behind Waiting for Superman, made by the people at GEM, with parents and teachers expressing their point of view.

No wonder NYC public school parents are so annoyed by the continual exhorting of DOE educrats to go see the movie, including repeated offers of free tickets.

As Diane Ravitch commented rather ironically on the NYC Education list serv,

"This is odd. Why is the NYC Department of Education promoting a film that claims the public schools managed by DOE are failures and children must flee DOE schools to enroll in a charter? I don't understand."

But that's the upside down version of reality, in the land of Tweed.