Well the 80th annual Academy Awards has come and gone, and though I’d still very much like to see Paul Thomas Anderson and Johnny Depp earn Oscars for something eventually, it was a surprising year. Not as surprising was the Documentary Feature category, which was dominated by politically themed docs. And though every one of the five nominated films were deserving of their nominations, I was pleasantly surprised to see filmmaker Alex Gibney’s harrowing “Taxi to the Dark Side” take the Oscar. Of all the films nominated this yea,r I was the most riveted and shocked by the content of that film, and I thought it was a brave choice on the Academy’s part. I was equally glad to see the excellent Javier Bardem and the Coen Brothers honored with a bevy of awards. All and all, one of the best Oscar years in recent memory and I’m very much looking forward to the wonders that the rest of ’08 will hold.