WGA nominations don't tell the whole story

This week is huge for precursor nominations (Visual Effects Society, DGA, PGA, and BAFTA all hit tomorrow) but today was the Writers Guild of America's turn.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• 1917 -Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns
• Booksmart - Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, Katie Silberman
• Knives Out - Rian Johnson
• Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach
• Parasite - Bong Joon Ho & Han Jin Won

A strongish lineup even if we wouldn't single out 1917's strength as its writing. Curiously, both The Two Popes and Hustlers were eligible for Original with the WGA (and missed) but they're both competing in Adapted for Oscar voters where they actually belong since they're based on a play and a magazine article respectively. Did the confusion cost them votes?  This WGA lineup is bad news for critical darlings like Honey Boy, Uncut Gems,  and Dolemite is My Name, any of which might have made headway in a weaker year for Originals. But the three strongest alternate threats for an Oscar nomination weren't eligible...

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Oscar Trivia, Weekly: The Academy's Tarantino blindspots

by Nathaniel R

Tarantino winning his first Oscar in the mid 90sWednesday mornings will now be devoted to Oscar trivia (the crowd cheers... we hope). This morning let's look at some factoids you might have missed in Oscar's on & off again romance with Quentin Tarantino. Like many A-list writer/directors before and presumably after him, Oscar has honored him with a Screenplay Oscar (two, in point of fact) but not a directing Oscar. That's how they often do with the more polarizing and unique talents. Do enough people realize this to make Tarantino and actual threat for the Best Director win for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as his career threatens to wind down? We aren't sure (yet) but for today's particular trivia pursuit, instead we'd like to talk about the categories that Tarantino films compete in versus the ones they don't.

If you smoosh all of Tarantino's 9 films pre-Hollywood together for a rough average, the movie would be nominated for 3 Oscars (Supporting, Screenplay, and Cinematography) and have a 50% chance of winning a single one of those races...

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The New Classics - A Separation

Michael Cusumano back again with my new series on great scenes/films of the 21st Century. This week a title we will surely hear often when the best of the decade lists start rolling in...

 

Scene: Razieh is Fired (aka The Incident)
It’s rare for a movie, even a great movie, to sneak up on the audience the way Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation does.

The screenplay is centered around an inflection point. Everything pulling the characters inexorably toward, or ricocheting off of, the moment when a man shoves a woman out his front door. Yet this action is not granted any special emphasis. First-time viewers have no clue they’ve witnessed the action around which the entire story pivots. It is only a few short scenes later, when the man is on trial for causing the miscarriage of the women he pushed (a murder charge in Iran) that the weight of that shove comes crashing home...

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April Foolish Predictions #7: Screenplay, Director, and Best Picture

Taika Waitita directing Scarlett Johansson on the set of "JoJo Rabbit"

Our annual way-too-early Oscar predictions are nearing completion! Only lead actor, and both actress categories left to go. Today the big one BEST PICTURE, as well as both screenplay races, and the Best Director contest. The latter looks really exciting (at least at this way-too-early juncture) because the competition appears to be more gender-balanced than usual with a handful of female directors in the mix. Imagine that! Of course the year might not play out like that once the films are screened, but here's hoping the female directed pictures deliver in a can't-be-denied kind of way.

• PICTURE PREDICTIONS
• SCREENPLAY PREDICTIONS
• DIRECTOR PREDICTIONS 
• SUPPORTING ACTOR PREDICTIONS
• FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM PREDICTIONS
• VISUALS PREDICTIONS
• AURALS PREDICTIONS 
• ANIMATED FEATURE PREDICTIONS 

Blueprints: Standout sequences in Original Screenplay winners

by Jorge Molina

Last Sunday, in a ceremony filled with joyful surprises, heartbreaking disappointments, and Emma Stone’s shocked tears, Green Book won Best Original Screenplay.  Instead of driving into Peter Farrelly, Brian Currie and Nick Vallelonga’s screenplay, let’s take a look at the last ten years of winners of Best Original Screenplay (2008-2017), and a standout sequence in each. Because somehow Viggo Mortensen folding a pizza in half and Mahershala Ali learning how to eat fried chicken are now among their peers.

The King's Speech, Django Unchained, Her, Birdman and more are after the jump...

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