The first Guild Nominations are here!
Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 4:30PM
Cláudio Alves in Makeup and Hair, Oscars (24), PGA, Punditry, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, The Deliverance, The Substance, documentaries, editing, guild awards

by Cláudio Alves

THE SUBSTANCE continues to be a hit with precursors. A rare feat for horror cinema.

So far, the season has been dominated by critics' awards, which, while worthy of attention, don't offer great help when it comes to predicting the Oscars. After all, AMPAS is formed by industry people rather than critics. So, the guilds are a better indicator of what might be a hit with the Academy and, at long last, we're starting to see the first guild nominations. These past few days, the American Cinema Editors (ACE) and the Makeup Artist & Hair Stylist Guild (MUHS) announced their yearly honors. The Producers Guild of America (PGA) also announced their documentary contenders. Let's see what we can deduce from the results so far…

 

AMERICAN CINEMA EDITORS

Best Edited Feature Film – Drama, Theatrical 

 

Best Edited Feature Film – Comedy, Theatrical 

 

Best Edited Animated Feature Film

 

Best Edited Documentary Feature

 

Best Edited Feature Film – Non-Theatrical

 

In the 21st century, only two films managed to win the Best Picture Oscar without first being recognized by the American Cinema Editors – Spotlight in 2015 and CODA in 2021. So, this is terrible news for The Brutalist and September 5. I still think the latter will secure a nomination from the Academy's editors branch, but this proves it's less liked than one might have presumed. In contrast, Civil War and Furiosa rise as potential contenders. If not for Best Editing, then for other technical honors. There's undoubtedly some industry love there, as well as for The Substance and Challengers. Seems that Hollywood awards voters aren't as allergic to horror and erotic melodrama as some believed. Like Best Actress, the editing race could go a million different ways this season and I, for one, can't begin to tell you how much this unpredictability thrills me.

The animated feature nominations also point toward Flow's popularity beyond the critics. The documentary honors are as conventional as ever, much more so than the Academy's branch as of late. The Oscars aren't fond of celebrity profiles, which dominate this lineup. It is fun to see a movie on the Moviola getting celebrated by editors. Feels fitting, doesn't it?

 

MAKEUP ARTISTS & HAIR STYLISTS GUILD

Best Contemporary Make-Up

 

Best Period and/or Character Make-Up

 

Best Special Make-Up Effects

 

Best Contemporary Hair Styling

 

Best Period and/or Character Hair Styling

 

It seems Megalopolis isn't so dead after all, even if Coppola and his team seem entirely uninterested in awards gold and don't seem to be campaigning much. But the big news here has to be the multiple nods for Lee Daniels' The Deliverance. Can another of Glenn Close's shots at Netflix-produced Grand Guignol nab a Makeup nod at the Oscars? Hey, it worked for the dreadful Hillbilly Elegy.

There's a temptation to look at the guild's love for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Gladiator II, The Substance and Wicked and presume they are Oscar shoo-ins, with Emilia Pérez, A Different Man and maybe even Deadpool & Wolverine battling it out for the last slot. However, the MUHS isn't always in synchronicity with AMPAS. Just last year, Society of the Snow was shut out altogether before securing an Oscar nomination.

But also, where is Nosferatu?

 

PRODUCERS GUILD AWARDS

Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Picture 

 

Now, it's important to note that PGA has a much more conservative and Hollywood-forward taste in non-fiction cinema than the Academy's increasingly eclectic and international Documentary Branch. For example, it's exceedingly rare for the PGA to nominate films without a distributor, but AMPAS often shortlists them, with 2022's A House Made of Splinters making it to the final ballot. That means we shouldn't count out No Other Land entirely. Confrontationally political and international films also have an easier time with AMPAS than the PGA voters.

But maybe the biggest takeaway from these nods is a matter of precedent and the category's recent history. Lately, there's always a couple of documentary frontrunners that garner a mountain of support from precursors and then get snubbed by the Academy. Remember the PGA-nominated Beyond Utopia, Apollo 11, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Three Identical Strangers, Jane, and Life Itself, among many others? Will that be Super/Man this year? I wonder.

 

What do you make of these first guild nominations? Anything stand out to you that I didn't mention?

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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