One of the things that annoys me about the Oscar categories such as Best Short Film or Best Documentary is that one rarely gets to see these films, since most aren't released theatrically.
Occasionally, you may get some of the Best Foreign Language nominees if you have a local film guild or arts theater, but more often than not, these films that do get nominations in these categories unfortunately get forgotten about by the average film goer.
Tonight is a rare chance to see one of these movies as HBO airs "Saving Face," which won an Oscar last month as Best Documentary, at 8:30 p.m. The movie documents the efforts of a London-based Pakistani surgeon to perform plastic surgery on Pakistani women who have been victims of acid attacks. Some of it is going to be difficult to watch for most people, but the movie aims to get these attacks outlawed.
Best Documentary has been one of the more controversial categories over the years -- not for the films and their subject matter themselves, but rather for what films don't get a nominations because of the Academy's weird nomination process for the category. Notable, critically acclaimed documentaries such as "The Thin Blue Line," "Hoop Dreams, "Roger & Me" and others have been left out for one reason or another. "Waiting For Superman" was last year's notable omission despite a huge campaign to get it on the ballot.
"Saving Face" was pretty much a consensus pick to win it this year, so this is your chance to check it out.
THURSDAY'S BEST BETS: I hope people got a chance to check out the premiere of "Awake" (NBC, 10 p.m.) last week. It follows new episodes of "30 Rock," "Parks & Recreation," "The Office" and "Up All Night." This is the last new "Parks" for about a month as NBC returns "Community" to the lineup next week. You can catch some new "Community" animated shorts on NBC's website or on Hulu.
CBS has new episodes of "The Big Bang Theory," "Person of Interest" and "The Mentalist," while ABC reruns the pilot of "GCB" in the slot reserved for "Private Practice" at 10 p.m.
Fox continues with "American Idol" and a new episode of "The Finder" from 8-10 p.m.
On cable, there's a new "Archer" and "Unsupervised" from 10-11 p.m. on FX.
