Busy Guild Weekend: WGA, CAS, MPSE, MAHS

We're into the final stretch, and this long weekend saw a smattering of the remaining guilds announce their winners for the year (only the CDG is left).

The most contested of them would have to be the Writers Guild of America Awards, where the three presumed Best Picture heavyweights Moonlight, La La Land and Manchester by the Sea all squared off against each other for Best Original Screenplay. Moonlight won that distinction, giving me just a bit more comfort in sticking with it for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, although this gives us no further hints in the nail-biter between La La Land and Manchester for the Original Screenplay prize.

With both Moonlight and Lion absent from the guild's Best Adapted Screenplay category, Arrival was able to capitalize. What a wonderful surprise it would be if it could translate its Critics Choice and WGA cache into Oscar gold!

The prize for Documentary Screenplay went to Robert Kenner's Command and Control, which had been shortlisted for the Oscar but failed to make the final five.

[UPDATED] Guilds Round-Up: CAS, VES, ASC, MUAHS, CDG

The BAFTA and PGA weren't the only industry groups that got a word in yesterday. Here's a summary of other artisan guilds and societies that have had their say in advance of Friday's Oscar deadline:

AMERICAN SOCIETY of CINEMATOGRAPHERS

Arrival -- Bradford Young
La La Land -- Linus Sandgren
Lion -- Greig Fraser
Moonlight -- James Laxton
Silence -- Rodrigo Prieto
That's a mighty fine-looking lineup, folks.
In fact, swap one of these out for The Light Between Oceans and you have my own personal ballot. As it stands, this could be a perfect match-up with Oscar's cinematography branch. To see Bradford Young and Greig Fraser nominated alongside eachother would certainly make happy many a cinephile who have itched to see them recognized for years. But I have a sneaky suspicion Robert Richardson could still figure in for Live By Night. He's pulled the very same trick sans guild nomination before.

CINEMA AUDIO SOCIETY

Sound Mixing -- Live Action Motion Picture

Doctor Strange
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Rogue One
Sully
I'm not sold on Doctor Strange as an Oscar nominee here (no MCU movie has been nominated in this category if you can believe it). As to what takes it over, I'm leaning towards Arrival, which is infinitely more deserving anyway, but quality of work is no guarantee with this branch. Are we all excited to see Kevin O'Connell (Hacksaw Ridge) lose his 21st Oscar to another musical on February 26th?
I know I am (*ties hangman's noose around neck*)

The Revenant and Mad Max stilling burning up the artisan guilds

The Cinema Audio Society and the Makeup and Hair Stylists Guild announced their best of the year last night, and unsurprisingly it was The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road (respectively) that came away as the big winners, solidifying their grasps on those correlative Oscar categories.

Mind you, these are still far from sure things, and the biggest competition these two movies face in Best Sound Mixing and Best Makeup and Hair are... each other.

'Guardians' & 'Budapest' Each Win Pair of MHG Awards in Tight Race for Oscar

Of the five feature film categories that the Makeup & Hairstylists Guild uses to distinguish the year's best achievements in their field, two apiece were won by Oscar nominees Guardians of the Galaxy and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I suppose this does little to clear up that super tight category, except perhaps to confirm that the transformative work in Foxcatcher, though effective, is a bit too subtle to trump those showier accomplishments.

Birdman, meanwhile, got a nifty tip of the hat for contemporary hairstyling. Lots of wigs and stage dos in that movie. Nice call, MHG.

Makeup and Hair Guild Nominations

The Academy's nomination balloting closes today, but the Makeup and Hairstylists Guild has chimed in before that final bell (there are four other guilds announcing next week, so their nominees will have no influence on Oscar).

This guild hadn't regularly given out awards for some time, until they decided to revive the tradition last year, honouring several films among which was the eventual Oscar winner Dallas Buyers Club.

Leading the field this year are Guardians of the Galaxy and Into the Woods, each receiving three nominations across five categories. Guardians is looking good for an Oscar nod (and possibly the win), but Into the Woods failed to even make the short list.

Besides Guardians, other Oscar finalists which find representation here include The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Theory of Everything each with a pair, and Foxcatcher and Maleficent each with a single citation for their transformative prosthetics. Noah and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were shut out entirely.

One final side note before we dig into the nominees: This guild needs to do a better job with their categorizations. How do they determine what counts as contemporary as opposed to period makeup/hair, and how do they account for fantasy offerings? Hunger Games gets called period, while Guardians of the Galaxy gets called contemporary? I haven't exactly seen a lot of modern day folks walking around looking like this:

This was a problem last year too, which saw The Butler classified as contemporary and Dallas Buyers Club as period, but enough of that. On to this year's slate:

Makeup and Hairstylists Guild winners

The Makeup and Hairstylists Guild handed out hardware for the first time in 10 years last night, and two of this year's Oscar nominees came away with winning honours; Bad Grandpa and Dallas Buyers Club, the latter of which I'm predicting to triumph with the Academy.

Winners and brief opinions after the cut.

So there's a Makeup and Hairstylers Guild

Who knew! Apparently they haven't given out awards for the last ten years for some reason (?), but they're back, so here are the nominees.

All the Academy finalists are represented. Similarly, the Academy snubs are snubbed! Seriously, how does Rush not get in for Period/Character makeup? The title of that award is like it was designed to be won by Rush!