Moonlight Wins USC Scripter, plus ADG Winners

Moonlight's Barry Jenkins and Tarrell Alvin McCraney won the USC Scripter Award last night, which honours the best page-to-screen adaptations of the year by giving prizes to both the screenwriter and the author of the original source material.

Oddly, the Academy still included McCraney in the Oscar nomination as well, but if you're willing to give McCraney story credit on this project (for writing a play that never got produced), doesn't that mean you're treating it like an original screenplay? I don't think too many people are going to complain about McCraney standing alongside Jenkins with an Oscar in hand two weeks from now, but I'm curious to hear where others stand on this question.

Art Directors Guild nominations

The ADG has joined the chorus. While it's not unheard of for production design efforts that miss with the guild to find Oscar love, it doesn't happen often (only three films have pulled that trick in the last five years), so that doesn't bode well for Silence, Rules Don't Apply or Live by Night.

Let's take a look at the three feature film categories after the jump...

ADG Winners

The Art Directors Guild capped off the guild festivities for the weekend, handing The Revenant Best Period Production Design, Mad Max: Fury Road Best Fantasy Production Design, and The Martian Best Contemporary Production Design.

I'm really not sure where the Oscar race stands at this point. Mad Max has the lion's share of awards thus far, but it would make such an atypical winner, deserved or not. Same applies to The Revenant. Both are likely to take a bunch of craft categories, but this particular category? The Academy almost never gives it to a movie predominantly set in exterior locations. I'm still looking to Bridge of Spies to potentially pull a Lincoln, but I think I'll wait for BAFTA to weigh in.

'Budapest', 'Birdman', & 'Guardians' Take Top ADG Honours

Production designer Adam Stockhausen continued his unstoppable march towards the Oscar by picking up the Art Directors Guils Award in period design for his scrumptious work on The Grand Budapest Hotel. Honestly, enough said on this category already. Nothing's gonna beat this one. No one's gonna argue with that.

In the other categories, Birdman continued its recent guild surge by winning the award for contemporary design, thanks to Kevin Thompson's enormous Broadway recreations. And Guardians of the Galaxy's Charles Wood pulled off a mini-coup by snatching away the fantasy award from Oscar nominees Interstellar and Into the Woods.

ADG nominees

The announcement everyone will have their eyes on today is the Producers Guild nominations, but in the meantime the Art Directors Guild has sounded off on the year's best production design. Will our Academy's Best Production Design ballot be a sampling of these fifteen films, or will one or two titles passed over by the guild make their way to an Oscar nod? I notice that Mr. Turner was ignored in the Period category (um... what?), but there's always one guild snubbee that gets a second wind.

Check out the nominees with some commentaries/wild guesses after the cut.

ADG winners

The Art Directors Guild (who should maybe following the Academy's suit and change their name to the Production Designers Guild?) handed out their seasonal hardware last night, and all three of the feature film winners are in the running for the Oscar. But will it mean all that much at the end of the day, or does this group's less-than-stellar predictive history suggest that a completely different film could win the big one?

For Best Period Production Design the ADG went for Catherine Martin's opulent Jazz Age decadence in The Great Gatsby, besting Best Picture heavyweights 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle. She would be an unsurprising Oscar winner, both in this category and Best Costume Design, but last year's shocking victory for the refined minutia of Lincoln suggests that maybe those aforementioned Best Picture contenders still have more than a reasonable shot.

Art Directors Guild nominees

The parade of guild announcements marches on with Art Directors Guild. Will we find all of the Oscar nominees in the fifteen films honoured by the ADG? Not necessarily. Five of the last 25 Oscar nominees in this category were ones passed over by the guild, so it's not lights out yet for Oz the Great and Powerful or The Invisible Woman, although there's certainly enough good work this year to keep them off the final ballot.

The nominees and my commentaries after the cut:

Art Directors Guild nominees

The ADG has listed their nominees for outstanding production design.

Period Production Design:

Argo
Anna Karenina
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Lincoln

I'm thinking Anna Karenina (the possible winner here and with Oscar), Lincoln, and Les Mis are in the Academy's top five. No Master? Boo-urns.

Art Directors Guild winners

Production Design in a Period Film: Hugo

Production Design in a Fantasy Film: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2

Production Design in a Contemporary Film: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Glad to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo get its due in the Contemporary category for Donald Graham Burt's terrific sets, fending off Best Picture nominees The Descendants and Extremely Loud. The other two winners are pretty much expected, and might represent the best bets for Oscar's Art Direction trophy. I go back and forth on whether it's Harry Potter or The Artist that's next in line behind Hugo. It's probably a moot point anyway.

ADG, Annie preview

Not much to do nowadays but twiddle our thumbs waiting for February 26th, but at least some scattered guild announcements will keep us from nodding off to sleep.

The Art Directors Guild will have its say tonight, where I expect Oscar nominees Hugo and Harry Potter will come up big in the Period and Fantasy categories respectively. They seldom show much imagination in the Contemporary category, which usually goes to whatever nominee has the most Best Picture buzz. At that, I'll make my guess for The Descendants, even though it should be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by a country mile.

Meanwhile, the Annie Awards also land tonight. I'm not sure how they'll be distributed, but you can expect the feature film categories to be shared between Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots.

ADG nominees announced

Excellence in Production Design for a Period Film:

Anonymous
The Artist
The Help
Hugo Here's your winner
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Not sure why War Horse is missing from this category, but I should think it'll score with the Academy's art direction branch nonetheless. The Young Victoria scored an Oscar nom without an ADG nom two years ago, so the guild isn't necessarily a requisite qualifier.

Excellence in Production Design for a Fantasy Film:
The Adventures of Tintin
Captain America: The First Avenger
Cowboys & Aliens
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 Winner?
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Glad to see Rick Heinrich's terrific work on Captain America turn up here. As for Tintin, I'm happy with anything it can get, but if there had to be an animated entry in this category, I'd have preferred the gorgeous stylings in Kung Fu Panda 2.

Excellence in Production Design for a Contemporary Film:
Bridesmaids
The Descendants
Drive
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Not much to discuss here. None of these are likely to be nominated by AMPAS.
I guess The Descendants will win on the goodwill of Best Picture buzz.

ADG winners

Period: The King's Speech
Fantasy: Inception
Contemporary: Black Swan

Great to see Inception (the best production design of the year as far as I'm concerned) win out over Alice in Wonderland (the most overrated production design of the year as far as I'm concerned) in the Fantasy category.

The King's Speech expectedly won the Period category for its fine set dressing, likely on its way to Oscar's podium. Black Swan, though ignored by the Academy's art directors branch, took a well deserved gong for Contemporary design.

Congrats to the winners. It's a very fine slate.

WGA, ADG, Annie Preview

Having won the USC Scripter prize just last night with Ben Mezrich, Aaron Sorkin is likely to continue The Social Network's screenwriting winning streak with an Adapted Screenplay win at tonight's WGA awards. Any winner other than him would be a total shock.

As for Original Screenplay, intriguing scenario. David Seidler's soon-to-be-Oscar-winning script for The King's Speech is ridiculously ineligible, of course, so who takes it? Could they tip a hat to Christopher Nolan in consolation of his Director snub by the Academy? Could the general affection felt towards The Fighter push its team of writers to a win? Or will this be the one major industry prize Lisa Cholodenko (along with Stuart Blumberg) can lay claim to this season? I'm hoping for and predicting the latter. The Kids Are All Right is just too good a movie for her to go completely unrewarded this year.

Let's not forget two other industry groups announcing their winners tonight; The ADG and the Annie Awards.

I see The King's Speech, Alice in Wonderland, and Black Swan emerging victorious with the art directors, while the animation academy will probably provide How To Train Your Dragon with a hearty love fest, given how much of their organization is composed of Dreamworks employees.

ADG nominees!

The ADG's selections for the production design in feature films this year are:

Period Film
Get Low
The King’s Speech
Robin Hood
Shutter Island
True Grit

Fantasy Film
Alice in Wonderland
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
Inception
TRON Legacy

Contemporary Film
Black Swan
The Fighter
127 Hours
The Social Network
The Town

Not a bad lineup. I imagine Period will go to The King's Speech, Fantasy to either Alice or Inception, and Contemporary to... Black Swan? I'm kinda disappointed The Ghost Writer didn't pop up there. Same with The Wolfman in Period.