ASC surprises with nominations for "Wicked" and "Maria"

by Cláudio Alves

WICKED's Alice Brooks may become the fourth woman ever nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar.

This past week, among the bigger guild announcements, like those of the WGA and PGA, the American Society of Cinematographers also shared their nominees for the season. And what a collection of curious choices they make. For starters, the ASC rules mean its nominees on the main film category can fluctuate and, this year, we have seven nominees instead of the traditional five. But then you have the honored works themselves, including Wicked, which has been lambasted to hell and back for its blinding light choices, poor blocking, and murky color grade. The presence of some of the guild's favorite artists – Papamichael and Lachman come to mind – also surprised, somewhat. It seems A Complete Unknown has a shot at a Best Cinematography nomination, and Maria hasn't been so utterly forgotten after all…

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"Wicked" and "A Complete Unknown" are hits with SAG

by Cláudio Alves

The Screen Actors Guild couldn't resist Jonathan Bailey in WICKED. Could you?

The "guilds week" continues with SAG revealing their nominations and shaking up the Oscar race. Wicked is today's biggest champion, scoring in five categories, including a surprise Best Supporting Actor nomination for Jonathan Bailey. A Complete Unknown also got a major boost, as did The Last Showgirl, while The Brutalist and Sing Sing underperformed. The Screen Actors Guild has a more populist taste than almost any of the major awards-giving organizations, including AMPAS, so expect some discrepancies between these and the Oscar lineups. Still, when it comes to winning, it's difficult, though not impossible, to take home Hollywood's most coveted trophy without a SAG nod to match.

Find the complete nomination lists for both film and TV after the jump…

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A Few Thoughts on the Golden Globes

by Nathaniel R

Screenshot from the Golden Globes 

Did you watch the Golden Globes Sunday night? The show was (mostly) bereft of the kind of shocks we got in the pre-reform era but in a year where crystal Oscar balls are still foggy with possibility -- seriously, which film is going to win Best Picture? -- there was still inherent drama in the opening of envelopes. At least on the film side; the TV prizes were a complete snooze fest, merely rubber-stamping September's Emmy wins! Spreading the wealth should not be such a difficult concept for awards voters but we live in an age of monopolies and oligarchs so maybe abundance it's just not a vibe for the entertainment industry these days. 

Emilia Perez (4 wins) and The Brutalist (3 wins) were all the rage with Globes voters. But did anyone else get a boost heading toward Oscar nominations?

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Golden Globe Predictions, Anyone?

by Nathaniel R

The Globes often zig when people say they'll zag and true shockers are peppered all throughout their history. But times have changed. Since the HFPA have been shamed and named and restructured in the past five or so years, the voting body is quite different. They're likely to play things much much safer then they once did in an attempt to be respectable and predict the Oscars. But that's the cynical view. Any rounding off of their edges won't really even be conscious. When voting bodies become large (and their voting body is much larger now) they tend to default to whatever the 'buzz' is and lose the kind of personality that you can get with smaller organizations. It's why some festival juries and regional critics groups (a few of them at least) still exhibit something in the way of personality. Anyway, let's have fun guessing the Globes which start at 8:00 pm tonight after the jump...

BEST MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA

• THE BRUTALIST, A24
• A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, Searchlight Pictures
• CONCLAVE, Focus Features
• DUNE: PART TWO, Warner Bros. Pictures
• NICKEL BOYS, Orion Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios
• SEPTEMBER 5 Paramount Pictures

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Oscar Volleys: Best Adapted Screenplay is a confusing mess!

Lynn Lee and Christopher James discuss the race for the Adapted Screenplay Oscar...

EMILIA PÉREZ, Jacques Audiard | © Netflix

LYNN: Another year, another head-scratcher over what counts as “adapted” for Oscar purposes.  To be sure, this season there doesn’t seem to be any classification controversy on the level of last year’s Barbie kerfuffle. But, as ever, there’s some pretty transparent strategic positioning – such as the decision to campaign Emilia Pérez in adapted instead of original, which was likely driven by an assessment that adapted is the less competitive of the two this year.

Does that calculation seem right to you, and will it pay off? And does this mean we might have two musicals nominated for adapted screenplay this year, if Wicked also gets in (as I think it will)? Has that ever happened before?

CHRISTOPHER: I love the ever changing definition of “adapted,” which just seems to be “can you point to any written source that kinda relates to your film.” This year is such a strange year, as all of the frontrunners would be considered odd picks in past years...

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