Producers Guild Awards say 'You can't sit with us!' to the blockbusters

by Nathaniel R

The Producers Guild of America has spoken and even though in past years they've shown a fondness for superheros and blockbusters nominating films like Star Trek, Wonder Woman, and Deadpool, this year they've dashed the Oscar dreams of the 8th Spider-Man movie and the 25th official James Bond movie and selected only Dune to represent big franchise filmmaking. The "surprise" nomination, though it really shouldn't be considered a surprise given that they even nominated Molly's Game, was Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos. Their nominees are as follows...

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ASC and CAS nominations: 'Dune' & 'Power of the Dog' make both lists

by Nathaniel R

The American Society of Cinematographers and the Cinema Audio Society have released their nominations for outstanding work in film and television last year. As with the Art Directors yesterday, there are surprise omissions of notable contenders. West Side Story, for example, is not nominated for cinematography while another musical tick, tick...BOOM! misses with the sound guild. It's all leading up to an Oscar nomination morning that could be volatile.  The full list of nominations with notes after the jump...

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ADG Nominations - Good news and bad news for presumed Oscar Contenders

by Nathaniel R

Adam Stockhausen scored a double nomination at the ADG (French Dispatch and West Side Story)

The Art Directors Guild of America has released its nominations for the 2021 film (and television) year offering some surprise omissions (no Power of the Dog in period) and some delightful inclusions (In the Heights and The Green Knight for contemporary and fantasy respectively). The nominations for guild awards (any kind of guild awards) generally suggest as much about what the industry is watching as they do about whatever craft the awards are for. This is particularly true in "contemporary" categories, where we see year in and year out that the films are usually the ones with buzz in Best Picture, whereas in the Period of Fantasy category that's less important presumably because the work is so much more noticeable.

Their nominations plus punditry notes after the jump... 

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Visual Effects Society: "Dune" and "Shang-Chi" lead among the Oscar hopefuls

by Nathaniel R

Dune Part One looks like the unsurprising leader going into the 20th annual Visual Effects Society Awards with six nominations. Shang Chi  trailed with four citations. (They have animated categories, too, and Encanto did very well in those races, scoring six nods). These guild prizes give us clues as to what Oscar's VFX branch might also like. Oscar has only one visual effects category, of course, while VES has several, since it's their whole purpose. Here's the list of nominations and aa guide to how the two correlated this year...

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Critics Choice Awards will now be held on... the same day as BAFTA

After attempting to steal what little Golden Globes thunder remained by scheduling themselves on the exact same date, the Critics Choice Awards were delayed (understandably) by Omicron variant fears. A new date has been announced: March 13th, 2022. That's well timed in terms of Oscar (two weeks prior) but poorly timed in terms of celebrity strategy as it's the exact same day as the BAFTA ceremony!

Now it's possible things will work out for both shows as some celebrities will not want to cross the ocean (in either direction) due to COVID but it's still a worrisome choice; Celebrity presence is crucial to the success of live awards ceremonies. On the other hand, the calendar was filling up so the show had to go somewhere. If Sunday was the only day of the week to do it (why is that the only day of the week? the Oscar were on Mondays for decades!)  there were very few options remaining. February 20th was the Olympics closing ceremony. February 27th was already claimed for SAG Awards. March 6th belongs to the Film Independent Spirit Awards. But what was wrong with, say, March 20th, the week before the Oscars? What do you make of the move?