In Contention

Tag: Producers Guild of America

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Guild onslaught, Postlethwaite passes, more best of 2010

    • The Producers’ Guild of America surprised no one with their list of nominees.

    • The Writers’ Guild, however, threw a few curveballs (aided by assorted ineligibilities), while the USC Scripter Awards surprised some with one of their selections.

    • In sadder news, we said goodbye to esteemed British character actor Pete Postlethwaite.

    • After a few weeks of deliberation, Guy picked his best and worst films of 2010.

    • Continuing this week’s guild run, both the Cinema Audio Society and the Art Directors’ Guild weighed in with their nominees.

    (more…)

  • PGA announces nominees, goes sci-fi

    Sharlto Copley in District 9The most striking thing about the slate of nominees unveiled this morning by the Producers Guild of America is a heavy genre slant: all three of 2009’s acclaimed science-fiction mega-hits made the cut in the top category.

    Of course, that’s not all that surprising coming from the producers, whose appreciation of financial success tends to give populist contenders a leg up in their awards. (The first “Harry Potter” film was nommed back in 2001, after all.) I wouldn’t count on the trio of “Avatar,” “District 9” and “Star Trek” all making the Oscar cut, though two is a distinct possibility.

    Nobody should be surprised by this point that “Nine” was left off the list; this is merely the first concrete evidence we’ve had that awards hopes for the critically and commercially embattled film are fading fast.

    Full list of nominees, including animated and documentary categories (why just four slots for the latter?), after the cut.

    (more…)

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Oscar prods, Gotham nods, ‘Amelia’ clods

    Richard Gere• The Academy finally named the producers for next year’s Oscar telecast, first-timers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic.

    • All of which added weight to the speculation that Hugh Jackman might return as host.

    • The Gotham Awards provided the season with its first set of nominees, though it inspired more talk for its omissions.

    • Chief among those omissions: “Precious,” prompting talk of a backlash, despite generous media exposure positioning it as the one to beat.

    (more…)

  • John Lasseter to receive Selznick Award from PGA

    John LasseterThis is turning into quite the year for John Lasseter. A little over a month ago, he and his fellow Pixar directors were honored with the career-achievement Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Now comes the news that Lasseter has been named the 2010 recipent of the Producers Guild of America’s highest career honor, the David O. Selznick Achievement Award.

    Lasseter is the first animation producer to receive the award, which was last handed earlier this year to Michael Douglas. Previous recipients include Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, Roger Corman, Clint Eastwood, Jerry Bruckheimer, Dino De Laurentiis, Robert Evans, Billy Wilder … the list is long and intimidating. The award will be presented at the PGA Awards ceremony on January 24.

    Congratulations, then, to Lasseter — it’s a splendid feather in his cap, and a further omen that this might be the year that Pixar finally cracks the awards-season big league. Industry goodwill for the studio really couldn’t be any higher at the moment.

    Press release soundbites after the cut.

    (more…)

  • Guilds announce honorary awards

    Amy PascalWhen two guilds have already named certain people they plan to honor in 2010 — unlike the Academy, they don’t feel the need to relegate honorary award recipients to a separate ceremony in November — you know the season is upon us.

    The Producers Guild of America recently announced that their next annual Milestone Award will be jointly awarded in January to Sony Pictures chiefs Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton. Considering the studio currently holds the top two spots in the U.S. box office chart, it seems an apt week to make the announcement.

    Recent recipients of the award, the PGA’s highest career honor, include Jeffrey Katzenberg, Warren Beatty and Clint Eastwood, while last year’s winners were Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.

    (more…)

  • THE LONG SHOT: What are precursors for, anyway?

    Anne Hathaway at the 2009 Critics Choice AwardsI didn’t time my holiday to coincide with the sleepiest week of awards season, but that’s how it panned out anyway. While I spent 10 days drinking my way along the canals of France’s Burgundy region, divorced from my computer screen and, I admit, any thoughts of Oscar whatsoever, the industry, too, took a collective siesta.

    As people assimilated the minimal revelations of this year’s festival run (Gosh, people like “Precious?” Who knew?) and steeled themselves for the annual madness ahead, the Producers Guild of America clearly aimed to take advantage of the lull by announcing the expansion of its feature film nominees to 10. The blogosphere stirred briefly, dutifully posted the press release, and went back to sleep.

    The PGA was probably hoping for more of a reaction than it got, but that’s what happens when you ape a larger organization’s move three months after the fact…as everyone suspected you would, anyway.

    The truth, however, is that the news was as dispiriting as it was unsurprising. Because for all the organization’s feeble claims that the copycat move was made purely in the interests of artistic diversity, all it does is expose a serious identity crisis that afflicts many of the season’s precursors.

    (more…)

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Slumdog,’ Sundance, Santa Barbara

    It slipped my mind to do this yesterday, but here’s the week that was:

    • “Slumdog Millionaire” steamrolled through the week’s precursors, taking the Producers Guild Award…

    • … before landing top honours at the SAG Awards, which we live-blogged for your pleasure.

    • Still on “Slumdog,” a potential smear campaign against the film was duly foiled.

    • No surprise, then, that this week’s Off the Carpet column declared the race pretty much over.

    • The Academy settled “The Reader” producers’ dilemma by breaking its ludicrous “three-nominee” rule.

    • Meanwhile, some are wondering whether Harvey Weinstein’s tactics could harm the film’s chances, particularly in the Best Actress race.

    • Away from the Oscar race, gritty urban drama “Push” cleaned up at Sundance.

    • The Santa Barbara fest carried on, with an interesting screenwriters’ forum among the highlights.

    • Still at Santa Barbara, Danny Boyle, Kate Winslet and this year’s six Virtuoso stars were among those celebrated.

    • Could “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” really go 0-for-13 on Oscar night?

    • Finally, rounding off a very “Slumdog”-flavoured week, be sure to check out our interview with the film’s brilliant craftsmen.

  • Will SAG continue the ‘Slumdog’ sweep?

    As I anticipated, “Slumdog Millionaire” walked off with the Producers Guild of America Award last night, confirming its status as the unstoppable underdog-turned-juggernaut of this year’s Oscar race.

    It’s highly significant that Danny Boyle’s film managed to claim this gong, in particular; as Kris pointed out yesterday, of all voting bodies, it’s the PGA that might have had the most reservations about the film. A foreign runaway production from a relatively green producer, it’s not the kind of film they tend to reward — particularly against the box-office heft of a film like “The Dark Knight,” or the industry popularity of “Benjamin Button”’s production team.

    The fact that “Slumdog” overcame such potential obstacles is indicative of the across-the-board affection for this film in the industry; it’s a film that voters love as much as they admire.

    So I’m interested to see how it performs at tonight’s Screen Actors Guild Awards – another ceremony where the film has a number of disadvantages going in, given that it has a largely unknown, untested cast, and is less an actors’ piece than a director’s accomplishment. Technically, it has two shots at glory tonight, but since Dev Patel hasn’t a snowball’s chance of beating Heath Ledger in the Best Supporting Actor race, all its hopes rest on SAG’s top honour, the Best Performance by a Cast award.

    Many pundits are predicting “Slumdog” to go home empty-handed tonight, and it’s easy to see why. “Doubt,” which has the most nominations of any contender, has the kind of capital-A Acting from an esteemed group of thesps that could be catnip to voting actors, while “Milk” (Kris’ own bet) has both a powerhouse star turn and the kind of sterling ensemble work they like to reward.

    But I wonder. Though SAG doesn’t always treat its top prize as a Best Picture equivalent — “Gosford Park” and “Sideways” are examples of films that triumphed principally on the strengths of their casts, despite minimal Oscar momentum – the fact remains that this is essentially SAG’s only chance to reward the most beloved film of the season. While it’s arguably the least “actor-y” film in contention, I suspect that, as when the Simon Beaufoy-penned “The Full Monty” upset here in 1997, the voters are going to let their hearts overrule their actorly instincts.

    (More thoughts, and my SAG predictions, after the cut.)

    (more…)

  • What will win the PGA?

    Tonight, we will receive our biggest precursor pointer to date, as the Producers Guild of America becomes the first of the guilds to make its final pronouncement.

    In case you’ve forgotten, the five films vying for the PGA’s top honour are “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “Slumdog Millionaire” — and the one nominee to fall foul of Oscar voters, “The Dark Knight.”

    “Slumdog Millionaire” appears to be the safest bet, even if its producer, relative newcomer Christian Colson, is less of an industry insider than his fellow nominees. (After all, the field includes such popular figures as Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, and previous winners Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks.)

    But with “Slumdog” hurtling towards all-but-inevitable victory on Oscar night, not having missed a single stop on the awards trail so far, that shouldn’t matter. It’s by far the most well-liked film in contention, as well as being a profitable indie with a scrappy-fighter backstory. I doubt the PGA will resist.

    Back when the nominees were announced at the start of the month — doesn’t that seem a long time ago? — Kris suggested that “The Dark Knight” was the “likely winner.” It made perfect sense at the time: these are producers, after all, so they value financial prowess as much as artistic achievement. (Previous PGA nominees include “Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”)

    (more…)

  • PGA nominations announced

    Well, it seems I was off by one.  Could this be the first year ever that the PGA matches with Oscar 5/5?  We’ll soon find out.  DGA on Thursday (the real precursor to watch), as well as the BFCA Awards.

    And the nominees are:

    Motion Picture
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    “The Dark Knight”
    “Frost/Nixon”
    “Milk”
    “Slumdog Millionaire”

    Animated
    “Bolt”
    “Kung Fu Panda”
    “WALL-E”

    Documentary
    “Man on Wire”
    “Trouble the Water”
    “Standard Operating Procedure”