• “The King’s Speech” continued its cruise through phase two of the season with a widely unexpected Directors’ Guild victory…
• … and scooped top honors at a surprise-free Screen Actors’ Guild Awards ceremony.
• Following this brace of wins, this week’s Off the Carpet column said what we were all thinking: the race is over.
• Meanwhile, in his Long Shot column, Guy concluded that the royal biopic was likely the film to beat all along.
Even after “The King’s Speech” surprised at the Producers’ Guild Awards and took a dozen Oscar nominations, I held on to the notion that critical favorite “The Social Network,” a film more in line with the Academy’s recent choices, would emerge victorious on Oscar night.
However, Kris called it right. When the former film’s comparatively inexperienced director can beat a heavyweight field of Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan and the Davids Fincher and O. Russell to the Directors’ Guild prize — and for a film that’s widely been deemed, rightly or wrongly, an actors’ showcase more than a director’s one — it’s clear the tide has turned. It pains me to say it, folks, but the stammering-royal drama is your Best Picture winner.
That said, I’m not willing to hand Hooper an accompanying Best Director Oscar just yet. Although the Academy and the Guild have parted ways in this category just six times in 64 years, their last such disagreement strikes me as a pertinent one.
• The Directors’ Guild of America presented few surprises in their award nominations, though some raised eyebrows at “True Grit”‘s omission. (Their documentary nods didn’t move the needle either.)
• The American Cinema Editors’ nods matched those of the directors; the American Society of Cinematographers didn’t deviate much from the formula either.
• This week’s Off the Carpet column addressed the growing consensus around a “Social Network” win, days before Kris formally made the prediction himself.
• The Long Shot, meanwhile, wondered how the field of contenders this season ever got quite so narrow.
• Did you hear? The 2009 Academy Award nominations were announced. “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” led the pack.
• Days before, Kathryn Bigelow nabbed the Directors’ Guild Award — the first woman ever to do so.
• Back to the Oscars, we collected reaction statements from 44 of this year’s nominees.
• I rounded up some of the most pleasant surprises in the nominations, as well as the most unwelcome snubs.
• Pete Hammond reports from on the ground at Saturday night’s DGA awards. [Notes on a Season]
• Dave McNary from the angle of each nominee’s speech detailing the need for maintaining believability in their films. [Variety]
• On the heels of Kathryn Bigelow’s big win, Kira Cochrane wonders why there are so few female filmmakers. [The Guardian]
I may be looking out at my snow-caked garden as I write this, but it was in the spirit of spring-cleaning that I revised my nomination predictions this morning, ridding myself of most of the clinging personal hopes and hunches that lingered when I last updated them a month ago.
It wasn’t the most drastic of revisions (rather to my surprise, I found I’d already predicted a robust haul for “District 9” before the Guilds made it such a strong bet), but it was my most detached one to date, anticipating a race that looks set to be rather passionless on my part.
Rarely have so many of the leading players in the Best Picture race left me so cold – as “Avatar,” “Invictus,” “Precious,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Up in the Air,” “Star Trek” and even “Up” all failed to arouse any particularly warm feelings in me, I began to wonder if I should just retreat to bed until March 8.
(Unfortunately, for those of you wishing I’d do just that, a healthy precursor run for “The Hurt Locker,” one contender I love without reservation, is keeping me invested.)
Still, my individual response to the films in question isn’t the only reason I’m feeling a little distanced from this year’s competition. As it currently stands, Hollywood looks set to enjoy its most homegrown Oscar race in some time.
Much like last week’s announcement in their top category, most of the usual suspects are present in the Guild’s documentary lineup.
I’m particularly pleased to see French New Wave veteran Agnès Varda continue to rack up a healthy precursor tally; at this rate, she’s on course for her first Oscar nomination. (She’d be breaking an Oscar age record in the process, too.)
Of course, the DGA and the Academy don’t enjoy nearly same hand-in-hand relationship in Best Documentary as they do in Best Picture. Not since 1991 have the two agreed on a winner (Barbara Kopple’s “American Dream”), and even then, it was in separate years.
Meanwhile, a measly three of the last 17 DGA doc winners were also Oscar nominees. (It’s not much better in reverse: only seven of the last 18 Oscar winners also scored DGA nods.)
• In a big week for precursor announcements, the DGA nominations were the biggest — and least surprising.
• The PGA, meanwhile, found room for all three of the year’s hot sci-fi titles in its nominee slate.
• “The Hurt Locker” triumphed at the National Society of Film Critics Awards, the first film in 12 years to sweep the three top critics’ prizes.
• Over five days, I counted down my personal Top 50 films of the decade that was.
• And we’re not done listing: Chad also gathered his 20 favorites of 2009.
After yesterday’s DGA announcement, there was a number of comments (some ecstatic, some more cynical) made about its demographic makeup of the nominees being more diverse than usual.
Where most years see white men fill every space on the ballot, this year features both a female and a black contender (a gay man, at that) in the lineup — the seventh and first in DGA history, respectively.
Trivia value notwithstanding, is this important? Does it mean that their artistic achievements should be measured any differently from those of their white, male peers?
Of course not. “The Hurt Locker” would be as stirring and distinctive a film had it been directed by someone with testicles — and, though some will say otherwise, I think it would still have caught critics’ and awards voters’ fancy. A great movie is a great movie is a great movie, after all.
Alright, so, the safe bet wins the day. The nominees are:
James Cameron, “Avatar”
Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”
Lee Daniels, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Jason Reitman, “Up in the Air”
None of my little hunches panned out at the end of the day, and really, this is classic DGA. Best Picture frontrunners right…down…the…line. It’s amazing to me that a membership this vast can so consistently have its finger on the pulse of the season (while, of course, consistently ignoring a great many outside-the-box contenders).
Onward to the WGA, I suppose. The needle stays frozen in place, for now.