The awards season alphabet soup arrived in full force this week. ADG, MPSE and ASC on Monday. CAPE, CS, CAS, DGA and HFPA on Tuesday. MUAHS, SAG, DGA (again) and WGA on Wednesday. CDG, ICG, PGA and CEH on Thursday.
Still to come: AFI on Friday, BAFTA on Saturday and CCA on Sunday.
(Need a scorecard? Art Directors Guild, Motion Picture Sound Editors, American Society of Cinematographers, Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, Casting Society, Cinema Audio Society, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild, Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America, Costume Designers Guild, International Cinematographers Guild, Producers Guild of America, Cinema Eye Honors, American Film Institute, British Academy of Motion Picture and Television Arts, and Film Critics Association.
What does this all mean? It means that critics have stopped voting (more or less the CCA lost) and film professionals have started voting. And it means that we’re now starting to get real information from the kind of people who are now voting for Oscar nominations.
Over the course of four days, two award shows, 13 nomination announcements, and a list of recommendations, voters dropped hints about where the season might be headed, but they certainly dropped a handful of misleading hints. This is what I think we learned.
We have a Top 3
A trio of films, Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” garnered the week’s top awards: Directors Guild nominations and Producers Guild, plus a Screen Actors Guild Ensemble nomination. Todd Field’s “Tar” and Joseph Kosinski’s “Top Gun: Maverick” earned two of the three (both failed to make SAG), and seven other films earned one: “Women Talking” and “Babylon” earned SAG scores but no one else. , while “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Elvis,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “The Whale” earned only PGA nominations among the Big Three.
You can’t really use the Golden Globes as a yardstick for anything, but the fact that “The Fabelmans” and “Banshees” also won major film awards on that show helps reinforce the feeling that we do have a Top 3 at the moment. .
A Top 3 might mean nothing
Last year’s Best Picture winner, “CODA,” did not earn a DGA nomination. The year before, “Nomadland” didn’t earn a SAG nomination, and neither did the 2018 Oscar winner “Green Book.” Two of last year’s PGA nominees didn’t earn Oscar nominations, and 40% of last year’s SAG nominees fell short of Oscar-nominating voters. The new, expanded, and international Academy is unlike other voting bodies, so take precedent with a grain of salt.
“Top Gun: Maverick”, yes. Tom Cruise, maybe not
The movie that brought people back to theaters in the summer is an undisputed Best Picture contender, and in recent weeks its star seemed to be the strongest contender for fifth place for Best Actor. (The first four have been claimed quite convincingly by Brendan Fraser for “The Whale,” Austin Butler for “Elvis,” Colin Farrell for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” and Bill Nighy for “Living.”) But when SAG voters, a group that has always been fond of movie stars, passed over Cruise and gave Adam Sandler a nomination for “Hustle,” it sent a message as uncomfortable as Shelley Miscavige’s joke in the balloons.
Of course, SAG uses a nominating committee of randomly chosen members, so maybe the random picks were wrong for Cruise. But you have to think that Sandler has a real chance, just like Jeremy Pope for “The Inspection” and Hugh Jackman for “The Son.”
“The Whale” could have more influence than we thought
Darren Aronofsky’s searing drama about a severely overweight man trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter is a tall order, and awards season conventional wisdom had been that star Brendan Fraser was a lock, but the movie itself was scaring voters. But that was not the case from the Producers Guild, which awarded her a nomination for “Talking Women”, “The King Woman” and “Babylon”, among others.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” is making history… but below the line
Edward Berger’s harrowing World War I film, based on the book that produced a Best Picture winner in 1930, was one of the big winners when the Oscars announced shortlists in 10 categories in December. And he’s also done extremely well with the guilds; on Tuesday, it became the first non-English film to be nominated by the Cinema Audio Society, in addition to nominations from the Art Directors Guild and Motion Picture Sound Editors (the latter of which has a separate foreign language category).
It seemed like the movie, rather than “Glass Onion,” might have become Netflix’s best bet for a Best Picture nomination. But he has yet to cross beyond the BTL categories, missing out on nominations at the DGA (where he was a big underdog), SAG (ditto) and the PGA (where he seemed to have a chance). And That Means …
Perhaps “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” remains Netflix’s best chance for a Best Picture nomination.
Rian Johnson’s comedic whodunit looked like a crowd-pleasing hit and a potential Toronto International Film Festival nominee in September, then faded in the opinion of many forecasters as it played in front of crowds it might have been a pleaser during only a week. But now it’s on the streaming service and it’s earned a Producers Guild nomination, which suggests we may have been underestimating Benoit Blanc and his team. On the other hand, it’s exactly the kind of movie that the Producers Guild nominates and the Academy doesn’t; after all, that’s what happened with “Knives Out.”
Secondary stigma? What aftermath of the stigma?
Aside from the occasional “Mad Max: Fury Road” or “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” sequels aren’t nominated for major awards. Right? Wrong. This year, four of the 10 movies on the Producers Guild list are sequels: “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” . If you want to honor the movies that made money (Glass Onion excepted), you have to turn to the sequels, which is what the PGA did.
How unprecedented is this? Not only have they never nominated four sequels in a year, they’ve never nominated four in a decade either. The last PGA nominee was “Borat Next Moviefilm” in 2020, and before that “Mad Max: Fury Road” in 2015. Then you have to go back to 2009, and “Star Trek” only counts if you think reboots qualify. . And before that, “The Return of the King” in 2003: four sequels in 20 years before this year’s four sequels in one year.
“Elvis” was the King of BTL this week
Baz Luhrmann’s Big Show came up short with the Directors Guild and didn’t earn a SAG ensemble nomination, though Austin Butler did nab an individual nomination the morning after winning the Golden Globe. But in the other guilds, he nearly swept the table. , taking nominations from art directors, cinematographers, costume designers, sound editors, sound mixers, makeup artists, casting directors and publicists. That’s one more than “Top Gun: Maverick,” two more than “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and three more than “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” It’s hard not to feel that a good week for “Elvis” was overshadowed by the sad news about Lisa Marie Presley, but Luhrmann is in familiar territory with recognition for his film craftsmanship.
Adrien Morot also had a good week
On Wednesday, Morot received a Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards nomination in the category of Best Special Makeup Effects for his work transforming Brendan Fraser into Charlie, a 600-pound man in “The Whale.” The nomination came shortly after Blumhouse’s new horror film “M3GAN” became January’s sleeper hit, surpassing the $50 million mark. Much of the film’s success has been attributed to the creepy robot doll for which the film is named, a doll whose special effects makeup was designed by Morot at his Morot FX Studio.
