Sunday Top Ten: Pet Peeves and Highlights of the 2012/13 Awards Season

I decided for this last piece of Oscar coverage to split the difference between stuff that bugged me and stuff that made me happy. I could probably come up with ten highlights and ten pet peeves, but it feels cleaner to go with five of each. I will however acknowledge some things that just missed the peeves list (the Lincoln makeup snub and Global TV's SAG Awards snafu) and just missed the highlights list (Argo making history and Barbara Streisand).

And now, my top five pet peeves, and top five highlights of the 2012/13 awards season:

Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Sugar Man win WGA

Argo continued its domination of the guild circuit with a victory tonight at the Writers Guild of America Awards. It seems more and more that Argo was always destined to be this year's Best Picture champ, even without a Best Director nod. It can probably add Best Adapted Screenplay to what might be a relatively modest trophy haul next Sunday night.

Another expected win came for Searching for Sugar Man in the Documentary category, continuing its unmolested march to the Oscar. I'm so over this movie. I hate to say this of a film that I liked, but it's definitely the most overrated film of the year.

The only smidgen of intrigue around the WGA Awards was which film they would choose for Best Original Screenplay. It ended up going to Zero Dark Thirty, the only Best Picture nominee cited by the WGA in this category, so it wasn't much of a surprise. This Oscar category has me pulling my hair out. Amour, Django Unchained, or Zero Dark Thirty? A reasonable case can be made for any of them.

ACE, CAS both announce winners

Winners for the American Cinema Editors Awards went pretty much as expected. Oscar frontrunner William Goldenberg took home the award for Best Edited Dramatic Feature Film for Argo, while fellow Oscar nominees Jay Cassidy and Crispen Struthers won for Best Edited Comedy/Musical Feature Film for Silver Linings Playbook.

Malik Bendjelloul continued Searching for Sugar Man's dominance by winning the Documentary category, while Brave bested Oscar favourite Wreck-It Ralph in the Animated category. I'm starting to get some real vibes that Brave is the one that's gonna take Best Animated Feature next week. The marketing of Wreck-It Ralph may well have deterred many an Academy voter from even seeing it, whereas Pixar is a studio that usually garners respect from the industry. I may have to switch my prediction at the eleventh hour.

One Category at a Time: Documentary

Last year saw a tightly contested race for Best Documentary that ultimately left me guessing randomly as to which doc would win. I got it wrong, of course. It's always been tricky to anticipate which way the relatively small group of voters who attend the screenings will lean, but we don't have to worry about that this year.

A quietly announced by somewhat significant rule change occurred shortly after nominations landed: screeners will be sent out to Academy members containing the nominees for Animated Short, Live-Action Short, and Documentary Feature. Now the entire membership is allowed to vote on these categories.

This larger sample size seems like it should benefit populist fare, and that could all but seal the deal for the category's frontrunner.

Busy night for industry kudos with DGA, ADG, and Annie Awards

Oh what a night. Lots of precursor announcements to parse through, the biggest of which was the Director Guild of America, awarding their top prize to Ben Affleck for his Oscar hopeful Argo. At this point it can hardly be called a surprise to see Affleck picking up more hardware, especially after last weekend's PGA and SAG victories. Indeed, it could be that his Best Director "snub" by the Academy turns out to be one of the biggest deceptions in recent Oscar history, because it's looking like Argo may have been the unbeatable frontrunner all along. Time will tell.

In the documentary category, Malik Bendjelloul continued his awards season sweep for Searching for Sugar Man, likely on way to the Oscar. I liked the movie, but is it too much to ask the film industry to spread the wealth a little bit. There were other good documentaries this year, y'know.

My Award nominations: Documentary

As is the case every year, I never get to see as many documentaries as I should like. This shortlist is more representative of what docs I did manage to see, rather than what I consider the best. If I catch up with better ones at some point down the road I'll probably amend this list retroactively, but for now, my nominees for Best Documentary are:

PGA winners!

Well whadya think about that? My hunch (and several other pundits' hunch) about Argo being in the best shape to win with the Producers Guild turned out to be true. That preferential ballot, I tells ya! It works wonders for the least objectionable film on the slate, and of all the Best Picture nominees this year, Argo seems to be the one that just about everybody likes.

Its big win last night pushes it into a slight lead in the Best Picture race, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions: If Argo wins Best Picture, who wins Best Director? With so much time until Academy ballots are due, could Argo be peaking too soon? Final voting doesn't even start for nearly two weeks. That's more than enough time for either a backlash to take hold, or for the SAG and/or DGA Awards to shift momentum to another player.

Producers Guild preview

Tonight the first major industry guild will announce its winners: The Producers Guild of America. Not only are they the first guild out the gate in this loooong phase 2, but they're arguably the most important, or at least the most indicative, when it comes to winning Best Picture.

When the Academy made the switch to ten nominees and the preferential ballot back in 2009, the PGA was quick to shadow their decision. In all three years since, the PGA and Academy have matched up. So it follows that tonight's winner should be considered in the driver's seat for Best Picture... for the moment.

DGA doc nominees

Here they are:

Alison Klaymon, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
David France, How to Survive a Plague
Kirby Dick, The Invisible War
Lauren Greenfield, The Queen of Versailles
MalikBendjelloul, Searching for Sugar Man

This makes Sugar Man the only one to score with all the guilds that honour documentaries. It's clearly the popular favourite for the Oscar, but I'm glad to see the tragically Oscar-snubbed Queen of Versailles get a mention from the DGA.

Academy rule change in three categories

DVD screeners are being sent out with the nominees for Best Documentary Feature, Live-Action Short, and Animated Short to all Academy members, eliminating the necessity to attend official screenings in order to vote them, although screenings are still being held.

How will this rule change affect the voting dynamic in these oft marginalized categories? Will it open the door for more populist fare to finally triumph over artistic fringe contenders? For instance, studio efforts haven't won Best Animated Short in years, so maybe this is good news for Disney's Paperman, one of the most breathtaking filmmaking displays of 2012. Does this help popular Best Documentary contender Searching for Sugar Man tighten its stranglehold on the Oscar? We shall see.

American Cinema Editors nominate...

ACE Eddie nominations have landed just one day following Oscar nominations. Oscar snubees Les Mis and Skyfall can take some consolation in their citations here. All five Oscar nominees for Film Editing are accounted for.

Best Editing - Drama
Argo
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Skyfall
Zero Dark Thirty

The decade long streak of an ACE winner going on to win Best Film Editing at the Oscars was broken last year when The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo won (no comment) over The Descendants and The Artist. Not sure what the case will be this year. Argo and Zero Dark Thirty have showier editing, but Lincoln and Life of Pi appear to be more popular with the Academy. I'd still look to the winner of this prize to be the Oscar favourite.

Writers Guild nominees

The WGA nominees need always be taken with a grain of salt. They're the most exclusively insular of the guilds, only qualifying guild signatories for their awards, so several Oscar-bound screenplays are deemed ineligible every year. So don't take the absence of Django Unchained, Amour, and Beasts of the Southern Wild as particularly bad omens for their chances with the Academy. They weren't in the running with this guild, along with several others.

For the ten screenplays that did make it, it's a solid crop all around.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Flight, Written by John Gatins
Looper, Written by Rian Johnson
The Master, Written by Paul Thomas Anderson
Moonrise Kingdom, Written by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty, Written by Mark Boal

With Amour and Django being ineligible, I'm thinking two of these will be left out of the Oscar race. I'm really crossing my fingers for Looper to eke it out, because despite a healthy showing of critics prizes so far, it just feels like an Oscar snubee in the making.

Producers Guild nominees

The Producers Guild of America have named their ten best of the year. All the usual Best Picture contenders are there (unless you're still one of those who think The Master will be nominated), plus box office juggernaut Skyfall and independent gems Moonrise Kingdom and Beasts of the Southern Wild. I'm seriously hoping those last two can translate this eleventh-hour boost into some academy votes before the January 4th deadline. They are among the year's best in my book and I'd love to see either of them at the big dance -- preferably both!

Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures:

Argo
Producers: Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Grant Heslov
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Producers: Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey, Josh Penn
Django Unchained
Producers: Reginald Hudlin, Pilar Savone, Stacey Sher
Life of Pi
Producers: Ang Lee, Gil Netter, David Womark
Lincoln
Producers:  Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg
Les Miserables
Producers: Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh
Moonrise Kingdom
Producers: Wes Anderson & Scott Rudin, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales
Silver Linings Playbook
Producers: Bruce Cohen, Donna Gigliotti, Jonathan Gordon
Skyfall
Producers: Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson
Zero Dark Thirty
Producers: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Megan Ellison

2012 Capsule Reviews

As the season revs up I tend to spend less time on full reviews, but often deposit a paragraph or two for new films (or old ones I've just caught up with) in one post throughout the winter.

PGA Doc nominees

The Producers Guild has stumped for five documentaries, which are:

A People Uncounted
The Gatekeepers
The Island President
The Other Dream Team
Searching for Sugarman

With the Academy doc branch's new voting process, having a high profile is a huge advantage, directing the members' eyes to certain screeners over others. From this list, The Gatekeepers and Searching for Sugarman, having already been cited by other awards bodies this year, benefit the most from this announcement.