To be honest, there weren't as many formidable contenders for these spots as in other categories. The five you see here went pretty much unchallenged in my opinion, although
The Avengers came awfully close, so here's a quick shout out to Joss Whedon and Zak Penn. Now, my actual nominees for
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Argo
by Chris Terrio:
Scripted
with layered narrative precision, Argo
is an exemplar of storytelling. With a keen attention to both
character and plot, it derives great tension from the jeopardy of our
heroes even though we basically know how it all ends.
Beasts
of the Southern Wild by
Benh Zeitlin & Lucy Alibar:
Melding
social overtones of Hurricane Katrina with strokes of magic realism,
Zeitlin and Alibar have fashioned a poetic, life-affirming modern
fable underlain by themes of environmentalism, community, and above
all, change.
Lincoln
by Tony Kushner:
Top
billing for this film really should go to Kushner, who scripts each
scene with eloquent, theatrical dialogue and an attentive sense of
character. The verbose, antiquated speech yields payoffs for those
patient enough to take in its richness.
The
Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky:
Chbosky
proves that he as an intuitive grasp of the camera-as-narrator
concept. Much of his technique obeys convention, but its impossible
to fault such an effectively understated translation of the written
word into the language of visual storytelling.
The
Sessions by Ben Lewin:
One
of the key strengths of Lewin's quaintly tidy screenplay is that it
treats sex with both frankness and a playful sense of humour. His
sensitive, drama-lite approach allows what could have been a downer
of a film to just breeze by.
Just missed: The Avengers, Cloud Atlas, The Dark Knight Rises, Les Miserables, Skyfall
