Directors, Producers, and Writers Guilds

We've now entered what many refer to as the "guild phase" of awards season.

You might remember two years ago when the Writers Guild went on strike, resulting in a long, drawn out series of reruns on many a popular television show. It even threatened the Golden Globes, as no movie star would cross the picket lines of WGA members (let's not talk about the press conference fiasco we were left with in the ceremony's stead). Of course, the strike was not without justifiable cause, and thankfully they were able to settle everything by the time the Oscars rolled around.

Anyway, the guilds are a union, essentially. There's a guild for just about every job in show business, but the four big ones are made up of directors, producers, writers, and actors (the nominees of which we've already discussed in the SAG post). This week, the DGA, PGA, and WGA announced their nominees for the 2009-2010 season.




The DGA decided to go with a very predictable lineup (although, I'm pleasantly surprised that Eastwood's not on here). DGA is one of the greatest indicators of what we'll eventually see in the Best Picture category, and you'll see below each frontrunner of the year:

Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
James Cameron, Avatar
Lee Daniels, Precious
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds

I'm willing to bet that this is exactly what we'll see in the Best Director category at the Oscars as well.




The PGA did indeed surprise me a bit, as they chose all three of the great sci-fi films that came out this year. I don't think all three will make it in for Best Picture at the Oscars, but I think two will. Avatar and...? I'm leaning towards District 9.


Avatar
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
Precious
Star Trek
Up
Up in the Air

The PGA previously selected just five nominees, but they decided to follow AMPAS' lead this year and up it to ten. Before this year, I'd say that the DGA combined with PGA was a very good indication of what the Best Picture category would look like. But with this ten nominee nonsense, I'm not quite sure how it will measure up.




There has been quite a lot of talk about ineligibility over the past two weeks, from both AMPAS and the WGA (really, WGA?). I won't go into the rules specifically, but basically An Education, District 9, A Single Man, and a handful of others deserving of recognition for their writing were deemed ineligible. Also, both WGA and AMPAS have conveniently decided to place Bright Star in the adapted screenplay category (because Keats' 50-page book of poems clearly constitutes the story Jane Campion wrote for the screen). As if the film needed anymore uphill battles.

Here's our list of WGA nominees:

Adapted Screenplay
Crazy Heart, Scott Cooper
Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron
Precious, Geoffrey Fletcher
Star Trek, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci
Up in the Air, Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

Original Screenplay
(500) Days of Summer, Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Avatar, James Cameron
The Hangover, Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
The Hurt Locker, Mark Boal
A Serious Man, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Avatar gets writing recognition? Really? Don't worry, they nominated Cameron for Titanic, too. I strongly doubt the Academy will follow suit.