9 replies to this topic

[Peter T Chattaway]

The Producers Guild of America has revealed its nominees:

• THE ARTIST
  
• BRIDESMAIDS
  
• THE DESCENDANTS
  
• THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
  
• THE HELP
  
• HUGO
  
• THE IDES OF MARCH
  
• MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
  
• MONEYBALL
  
• WAR HORSE

The winner will be announced January 21 ... three days before the Oscar nominations are announced.

Edited by Peter T Chattaway, 28 January 2012 - 08:05 PM.

[Overstreet]

So glad to see they recognize that Tree of Life has been stealing thunder from Bridesmaids and The Ides of March.

[Peter T Chattaway]

We forgot to note last month that the Screen Actors Guild announced its nominees on December 14, including the ensemble-cast category, which has often been a sort of predictor of where the Oscar for Best Picture might go:

• THE ARTIST (The Weinstein Company)
  
• BRIDESMAIDS (Universal Pictures)
  
• THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
  
• THE HELP (DreamWorks Pictures / Touchstone Pictures)
  
• MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Sony Pictures Classics)

The winner will be announced January 29, or five days after the Academy Award nominees are announced.

Oh, and note how all five of the SAG ensemble-cast nominees are among the PGA nominees.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Peter T Chattaway, on 03 January 2012 - 01:38 PM, said:

The Producers Guild of America has revealed its nominees:

• THE ARTIST
  
• BRIDESMAIDS
  
• THE DESCENDANTS
  
• THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
  
• THE HELP
  
• HUGO
  
• THE IDES OF MARCH
  
• MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
  
• MONEYBALL
  
• WAR HORSE

The winner will be announced January 21 ... three days before the Oscar nominations are announced.

And the winner is... The Artist.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Vote!

Note, BTW, that the eight films nominated by the Academy overlap with four of the five films nominated by the Screen Actors Guild (the one omission being Bridemaids) and seven of the ten films nominated by the Producers Guild (the three omissions being, again, Bridesmaids, as well as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Ides of March). The one film the Academy nominated that the Producers Guild did *not* nominate is The Tree of Life.

[John Drew]

Peter, can polls be revised to restart the voting? War Horse got left off this list.

edit: Of course, maybe it doesn't matter, as it's taken 5 days and 230 views for anyone to actually notice this omission.

Edited by Baal_T'shuvah, 28 January 2012 - 03:25 PM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: Peter, can polls be revised to restart the voting? War Horse got left off this list.

Apparently they can! Thanks for catching that ... I remember having a niggling doubt that I had left something off the list last Tuesday, but it must have faded from my mind by the time I got home.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Peter T Chattaway, on 06 January 2012 - 12:10 AM, said:

We forgot to note last month that the Screen Actors Guild announced its nominees on December 14, including the ensemble-cast category, which has often been a sort of predictor of where the Oscar for Best Picture might go:

• THE ARTIST (The Weinstein Company)
  
• BRIDESMAIDS (Universal Pictures)
  
• THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
  
• THE HELP (DreamWorks Pictures / Touchstone Pictures)
  
• MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Sony Pictures Classics)

The winner will be announced January 29, or five days after the Academy Award nominees are announced.

And the winner is... The Help, which is interesting, as The Help got absolutely zero Oscar nominations outside of this category and the actress categories. So, the SAG award here probably doesn't mean anything as far as predicting the Best Picture winner goes. (Has a movie EVER won Best Picture without ANY nominations for Directing, Screenwriting or Editing? EVER?)

[Overstreet]

And yet... I have this sinking feeling.

In my notes on Gladiator, I said I had a sinking feeling that I'd just seen what would be heralded as the year's Best Picture. And it was. In my notes on Million Dollar Baby, I wrote the same thing. When I wrote my first impression notes on The Help, I said, "In my more cynical moments, I can imagine this winning Best Picture." I don't often have that particular slightly-nauseated feeling during a screening, but when I do... well, let's just say I really wish my intuitions had been misguided.

Since my intuition about The Help, I'd come to assume the prevailing notions that the contest is between The Artist and The Descendants. But lately, I've started to think that it's really between The Artist and The Help... and The Artist just seems so, I don't know, frivolous. The Help creates an illusion of real Importance, the kind of Importance that the Academy loves.

Edited by Overstreet, 30 January 2012 - 01:16 AM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Overstreet wrote:
: The Help creates an illusion of real Importance, the kind of Importance that the Academy loves.

Perhaps... but nobody at the Academy seems to have fallen for that illusion, outside of the actors' branch. As Pete Hammond put it tonight:

The Oscar nominations earlier this week showed no love throughout the individual branches of the Academy except the large actors group which gave it three nominations (Davis, Spencer and another supporting actress contender Jessica Chastain) to go with its Best Picture nod. With no directing, writing or editing (not to mention song, costumes, art direction where it also might have competed) the odds are very long that The Help can use its impressive showing at SAG to propel it into a dogfight with frontrunner The Artist. With Oscar ballots shipping on Wednesday though, Dreamworks and Disney may just be emboldened enough to give it a go. Warning: no film since 1930′s Grand Hotel has managed to win the Academy’s top prize without at least one directing, writing or editing nod and no film has won where its director wasn’t at least nominated for a DGA award. Of course precedents like these are made to be broken but a Best Picture win at this point would rank as one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. It would have to be driven by an extremely large majority of the powerful actors branch — easily the Academy’s biggest pool of voters with 1,183 members (nearly three times as many as the Producers which are the next largest group).

Is it possible? Well The Help is by far the only film of Oscar’s magnificent 9 to gross more than $100 million (well over that with $169 million domestically). Academy voters might want to pick the most popular kid in class this time especially since the front-running Artist (with 10 nominations) has made just $16 million so far. And Hugo with 11 nominations is inching toward $60 million since being released at Thanksgiving. Does the Academy, worried about TV viewers’ interest in their February 26th show, want to use this SAG sweep as impetus to put some weight behind the only smash hit in their Best Picture lineup? Or would they rather stick with historical patterns and conventional Oscar thinking, placing box office fairly low on the list of considerations? Judging by the majority of Oscars-past, voters generally don’t put popularity ahead of their own feelings. The victory two years ago of The Hurt Locker over Avatar made that crystal clear.

The Artist won Best Actor at the SAG awards today too, so clearly the actors' branch of the Academy would probably have at least SOME love for that film, too. If, however, SAG had given that award to Brad Pitt or George Clooney, then I think the Best Picture race would be a much more open question than it currently is.