In Contention

Tag: PGA

  • PGA goes to 10

    In a move entirely expected, the Producers Guild has expanded its tally of nominated films to 10, just like AMPAS.  Key quote from the release:

    “The PGA board approved the expansion of our Best Produced Picture category nominations to support our colleagues at the Academy, but also because we feel it better represents the unprecedented diversity of films being produced today,” said PGA President Marshall Herskovitz in a statement.

    Sure.

    The PGA nominees will be announced January 5, four weeks before the Oscar announcement. The awards ceremony will take place January 24.

    Your thoughts?

  • Hammond talks the season’s changes

    Golden GlobesIt’s a year of considerable upheaval in the film awards landscape.  This year has already brought a new AMPAS president, the addition of five new slots to the Best Picture category and a refined voting process for the top field as well.  But that’s not where the changes end.

    Pete Hammond is back on board for another year of his weekly Notes on a Season columns at The Envelope, and in this year’s introductory piece, he charts a number of other alterations to the season’s status quo:

    On Jan. 17, the Golden Globes, in a grab for increased ratings, are going to be broadcast live coast-to-coast on NBC for the first time; the BFCA’s Critics Choice Movie Awards are moving from Santa Monica to Hollywood two days earlier on Jan. 15 and will be tweaking its VH1 on-air category lineup and broadening its audience potential; the pre-Oscar Saturday tradition of a tented Independent Spirit Awards is also moving away from the sands of Santa Monica and into an unnamed venue on Friday night instead — a first in its 25-year history. Plus insiders are hinting to us that the Producers Guild may also be making a MAJOR voting change…

    That “major change,” Hammond ultimately confides, is that the PGA’s list of nominees might stretch to 10 as well this year.  Check out the rest at Notes on a Season.

  • Guessing the weekend’s guilds

    Screen Actors Guild awardI’ve been giving my picks out to various aggregators this weekend but haven’t bothered with a post of my own.  Go figure.

    I feel like the only sure thing at the SAG is Heath Ledger’s victory in the Best Supporting Actor category, but while everyone else is banking on Sean Penn and Kate Winslet in the leading categories, I’m inclined to say Mickey Rourke and Meryl Streep will throw their respective wrenches in the works.

    Winslet is probably sitting pretty for a supporting actress victory, while I can’t think of a valid reason to be against “The Dark Knight” in the new stunt ensemble category.  So…

    Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role: Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”
    Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role: Meryl Streep in “Doubt”
    Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role: Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”
    Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role: Kate Winslet in “The Reader”
    Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture: “Milk”
    Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in Motion Pictures: “The Dark Knight”

    I won’t be around when the awards actually go down, but I’m sure Guy will be covering.

    (PGA thoughts after the jump.)

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  • OFF THE CARPET: From the horse’s mouth

    Kate Winslet at the 66th Annual Golden Globe AwardsThe last two weeks have been a leaf blower to the debris an awards season can accumulate.  Individuals with some real say in the ultimate Oscar picture have finally gone on the record, painting a rather clear picture of the industry’s favorite films of 2008.

    But before diving into the realities of the various guild announcements, it is probably worth touching upon the gleeful diversions of the Critics’ Choice Awards and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe Awards.

    These are the two culminating critics soirees, capping off the annual critical kudos sprint through December and early January.  Both proudly declare themselves Oscar harbingers but only one seems to find itself decided from a critical mindset (even if that mindset is still warped by pegging a zeitgeist).  The other is, as always, a drunken time amongst industry friends that goes its own way.

    But dare I say it, this year the HFPA may have actually raised the bar for the Academy.  After years of embarrassing nominations announcements and sometimes bewildering winner choices, the group awarded a slate of contenders last night that stuck out as noble and, shockingly, novel.

    Can the Academy’s membership reach out to Mickey Rourke and meet him half way like he has clearly done this season to an industry that has shunned him for so many years?  Can they find a way to spread the kudos love while an inevitable “Slumdog” sweep pushes through the evening of February 22?

    Moreover, can AMPAS have the balls to follow in the HFPA’s footsteps with a double win for Kate Winslet, arguably deserving this year and a move that would be inarguable as a hell of an apology for years of Oscar losses?  The actress joined Sigourney Weaver last night as one of only two actresses to win a pair of Golden Globe awards for film performances in one evening.  Your move, Oscar.

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  • You’re kidding me with the surprise, right?

    David Carr says the film “crashed the Producers Guild nomination list.”  Susan King says it was “perhaps the biggest surprise of the nominees.”  The guys at HitFix put the film in both the headline and the lead, indicating some level of surpassed expectation (though that is admittedly my own reading of the editorial choices).

    Help me out here.  Am I the only one who thought “The Dark Knight” was guaranteed a PGA nomination this morning?  It was probably the film’s most likely mention in the entire precursor circuit, and that includes any nomination Heath Ledger has received.  This is a group that respects the dollar, folks.  “Harry Potter,” “Shrek,” “The Incredibles.”  Hell, there were even those expecting “Spider-Man” might crack the list in 2002.  So it’s kind of easy to anticipate a $500 million behemoth like this making it in, no?

    Am I crazy?

  • Don’t go changin’

    Typically Monday is “Off the Carpet” day, but I see absolutely zero reason to touch the charts this week.  The only races that are shaping up to be interesting are a couple of the performance fields, and the technical categories will be up in the air until we start hearing from the guilds (ADG kicks it off on Friday, ACE a week from today).

    In the meantime, my predicted five Best Picture nominees have not changed in over a month.  Coincidentally (or fatefully) they are the same five films chalked up for nods by the PGA this morning, and most likely, the same films that will pop up Thursday when the DGA announces.

    So, no column or chart update this week.

  • Pre-PGA housekeeping

    I hadn’t realized I’d let my predictions linger, unattended, since November — I revised them in my head and guess I thought that would somehow magically appear on the site. Anyway, I thought it best to do some cobweb-clearing before the PGA announcement later today (for the record, I’m going with “Button,” “Knight” “Milk,” “Slumdog” and “WALL-E”) sends the guessing game into a new dimension. You can find my revised nomination predictions here.

    I’m still playing with some quirky, no doubt foolhardy, notions, but I like to keep things fun before the Guilds force us to get serious. Many categories still look like a complete crap-shoot to me: in the confounding Best Actress race, for example, I’m experimenting with a Kate Winslet snub, while dipping (reluctantly) into the Angelina Jolie pool for the first time. It doesn’t feel good.

    In the top race, I’m still banking on “WALL-E” leapfrogging “The Dark Knight” as the populist choice, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see both in there. I’m happy with four of my Best Picture runners, but couldn’t settle on a fifth: “Revolutionary Road” is freezing over, “Frost/Nixon” has ticked all the boxes but doesn’t seem to be anyone’s favourite, and the other most-mentioned contenders are a pretty passionless bunch too. Instead of flipping a coin between them, I decided to go a little crazy and try “Happy-Go-Lucky” on for size.

    Below the cut, for the hell of it, some winner picks to accompany Kris’s last week. In the top race, I’ve moved on from my earlier prediction of a “Milk” victory (seeing the film helps sometimes), but something still doesn’t feel right about “Slumdog Millionaire” to me — it seems like the kind of film that would benefit from going into the Oscar race as an underdog rather than the favourite. I honestly have no idea, so I’ll take that as an excuse to go mental again until I get a clearer sign.

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  • PGA noms coming next week

    Producers Guild of AmericaThe Producers Guild of America announces its nominees Monday.  Then the DGA wraps up the big three (after PGA and SAG) on Thursday.  I expect “The Dark Knight” is a no-brainer nominee here and the likely winner.  After that, I’d say “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Slumdog Millionaire” are likely, especially in the case of the former, what with producing powerhouses Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (the former popping up here last year for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” in something of a surprise).

    After that it gets a bit tricky.  I’d be tempted to think “WALL-E” will turn up here like “The Incredibles” in 2004.  Box office + critical acclaim + major awards consideration, all that.  But with the animated category being instituted a few years back, that scenario becomes less likely.

    There isn’t much that screams PGA about “Doubt” or, to a lesser extent, “Revolutionary Road.”  But Scott Rudin did well enough with two films last year.  “Milk” and “Frost/Nixon” might be a decent bets, but surely something will pop up in the way of the unexpected.  I just can’t put my finger on what that will be.  Since the group began a nominations format, the eventual five Best Picture nominees have never been assembled in the PGA collective, and that includes 2002 and 2003, the two years that netted six nominees.

    “Iron Man” popping up wouldn’t be a shock.  “The Wrestler” could be a nice indie call, but I think it’s doubtful.  Ah screw it, I’m going to go with the following, including a “Milk” snub that is most likely a mistake:

    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (Ceán Chaffin, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall)
    “The Dark Knight” (Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas)
    “Frost/Nixon” (Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard)
    “Revolutionary Road” (Bobby Cohen, John Hart, Sam Mendes, Scott Rudin)
    “Slumdog Millionaire” (Christian Colson, Paul Ritchie)

    What are your predictions?

  • 11/7 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Ron Howard and Brian Grazer• Jeffrey Wells is basically cool with “Doubt.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Anne Thompson chimes in, too. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Steven Zeitchik draws parallels from this year’s political figures to the films in the Oscar hunt. [Risky Biz Blog]

    • Patrick Goldstein goes after the Oscar bloggers! [The Big Picture]

    • David Poland responds! [The Hot Blog]

    • …now that that’s over…

    • Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are set to receive the PGA’s Milestone Award. [Variety]

    • Anthony Breznican chats it up with James Bond himself, Daniel Craig. [USA Today]