One Category at a Time: Best Adapted Screenplay

When AMPAS made its ruling to move Moonlight to Best Adapted Screenplay from its Original designation, it looked as though the way was paved for Barry Jenkins to claim at least one Oscar of his own for one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. But the situation is not so cut and dry...

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.

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.

My Awards: Adapted Screenplay

Competitive field this year, especially with previously assumed originals Moonlight and Loving being shifted (correctly, I believe) to the race for Best Adapted Screenplay. Here are the scribes who I feel did the best job at turning their non-cinematic source material into beautiful moving pictures:

WGA Nominees, plus thoughts on Hidden Figures

The Writers Guild of America sounded off today, and the Original Screenplay category is loaded with contenders that are probable Oscar nominees. Mind you, that's because two of them (Moonlight and Loving) will be competing in the Adapted Screenplay category for the Academy Awards. Accordingly, the WGA's Adapted Screenplay lineup is fleshed out with some contenders which stand little chance of landing a corresponding Oscar nod.

Original Screenplay
HELL OR HIGH WATER, Taylor Sheridan
LA LA LAND, Damien Chazelle
LOVING, Jeff Nichols
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, Kenneth Lonergan
MOONLIGHT, Barry Jenkins, Tarell McCraney

Adapted Screenplay
ARRIVAL, Eric Heisserer
DEADPOOL, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
FENCES, August Wilson
HIDDEN FIGURES, Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, Tom Ford

Thank God Moonlight was moved to this category for Oscar purposes, because this (with the notable exception of the superb Arrival) is a weak group. Here's my question: Does Moonlight now being considered an adaption disqualify the original playwright Tarell McCraney from what would otherwise be considered a nomination-eligible writing credit on the screenplay? The move might have guaranteed an Oscar for Jenkins, but effectively robbed McCraney of the nomination. I'll be interested to see how AMPAS rules.

Top Five Pet Peeves of the 2015-16 Oscar Season

The Oscar derby has been dead and buried for over a week now, but as usual I still have a few nuggets to get off my chest before calling it a year. Read on, if you dare, and behold my final purge of negativity, after which I can say "Okay, I'm over it" (hopefully).

5. The Big Short's Adapted Screenplay sweep

I know I've been harping on Adam McKay and Charles Randolph's well-meaning housing crisis comedy for months, but I just don't see what made this such a unanimous choice for writing awards. Especially when the competition hasn't been this stacked in years. I mean, good God: Carol, Room, Brooklyn, The Martian, inexplicable snubbee Steve Jobs, and even the long shots from 45 Years to Mr. Holmes write circles around The Big Short's misguided gimmickry, which gets by on sounding a lot smarter than it truly is. The lone bone tossed to Aaron Sorkin by the Golden Globes is going to look very good ten years from now (Heck, it looked good the moment it happened). At least other season sweepers like Inside Out and Son of Saul can be justified on quality, but I'm not drinking the Koolaid on this one.

One Category at a Time: Adapted Screenplay

After a lean couple of years, 2015 saw the race for Best Adapted Screenplay return to high competitive form: Terrific adaptations like Steve Jobs and 45 Years couldn't find room in a field crowded mostly by Best Picture nominees: Critics prizes have been split every which way: And until the PGA pointed to our Best Picture frontrunner, it felt as though any of the five nominees had a legit shot at winning. It's a shame the contest has devolved into such an open-and-shut case.

'Spotlight' and 'Big Short' win WGA Awards

Not much more to comment on in these races. The screenplay categories are probably the biggest locks of the night. The documentary prize featured none of this year's Oscar nominees, which was good news for Alex Gibney's Scientology doc Going Clear.

My Award Nominations: Adapted Screenplay

A far more competitive field than it was last year, with some truly heartbreaking decisions about who to leave off. But five is the ceiling, and these are the five Adapted Screenplays that I thought were tops:

Early Oscar Predictions: Adapted Screenplay

I've sounded off on some original screenplay possibilities, so here are my wild guesses at the adaptations:

WGA Corroborates Pundits' Favs for Writing Oscars

The Writers Guild of America may not be the most reliable Oscar bellwether due to the their annual heap of ineligible screenplays, but when their winners coincide with the perceived frontrunners anyway, it still reassures any doubtful pundits.

This year, my predictions for both writing Oscars were mirrored by the WGA; Graham Moore's script for The Imitations Game in adapted and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel in original (more on that race on Monday).

The documentary field, for a refreshing change of pace, went to something other than CitizenFour, which wasn't nominated. Instead, it went to Brian Knappenberger's The Internet's Own Boy. I actually caught up with this doc just the other day, and quite liked it. It's often hard to assess how well a non-fiction film is "written", but I tend to think about how well it illuminates or explains its subject matter. That's one arena where Knappenberger's extensive, comprehensive study of free info on the Internet clearly has Laura Poitras' film beat.

My Award Nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay

No offense to any of the hardworking screenwriters who slaved away adapting some previous work into a movie that came out last year, but this category is just so... desolate. By far the weakest field I've seen since I started writing about this stuff. I looked up more Adapted Screenplay FYC posts on various Oscar blogs than ever before, because the Oscar frontrunners just weren't doing it for me.

I suppose that's a blessing in disguise, though, as it forced me hunt down some true gems that I probably would have missed otherwise. So for what they are, here are my five Best Adapted Screenplay nominees for 2014. Here's hoping 2015 has more to choose from.

One Category at a Time: Adapted Screenplay

The state of the writing categories for this year's Academy Awards really is a tale of two contests; One is as competitive and over-stuffed with quality as I've ever seen it, while the other is practically a wasteland of mediocrity (with the only truly exceptional screenplay appearing courtesy of an Academy error in its favour).

Today we're looking at the latter, Best Adapted Screenplay, which is so thin on genuine contenders that they had to poach one of the surefire nominees from the Original Screenplay camp just to fill things out!

Review - The Imitation Game

“Are you paying attention?” a blank movie screen asks it audience in an austere British accent. “Good. This is going to go very quickly now. If you are not listening carefully, you will miss things. Important things.”

The voice belongs to Alan Turing (by way of Benedict Cumberbatch), the subject of The Imitation Game. The preeminent mathematician and number theorist is widely regarded the 'Father of Computer Science', but his other claim to fame – which this film dramatizes – is that it was he who cracked the Germans' mind-boggling Enigma Code during WWII, thus turning the tide in the Allies' favour.

I thought it might be fitting to encrypt this review, but since not everyone is as proficient at deciphering garbled letters as Mr. Turing was, good old fashioned English will have to do. Come to think of it, 'good', 'old fashioned', and 'English' are probably the three best terms to describe The Imitation Game.

Yes, the film is very English, like an episode of Masterpiece Theatre that's slightly too good to be relegated to the telly. Yes, the film is old fashioned, mounted with a classical absence of style that your grandmum would love. And yes, for any sniping about how flagrantly it's been groomed to win over Oscar voters, the film is indeed quite good.

WGA Announces Nominees

The final guild of the day is also the most inconsequential, by which I refer to the Writers Guild of America. I say "inconsequential" not as a slight on their organization, but merely as an observation that their finalists for Best Adapted and Original Screenplay have little to no bearing on the Oscar race due to their long list of ineligible titles.

This year, heavyweight writing contenders that were DQed by this guild include Birdman, Selma, Mr. Turner, and The Theory of Everything. So no, don't expect Guardians of the Galaxy to earn a surprise nomination for its script.

Read some additional thoughts on all the nominees below:

WGA winners!

While the Annies drag on, I have more than enough time to mention that the Writers Guild of America have awarded Her, Captain Phillips, and Stories We Tell in their feature film categories. This is an odd scenario in that I can see none of these winners repeating on Oscar night.

One Category at a Time: Adapted Screenplay

Best Adapted Screenplay was the only category I guessed 100% correctly for nominations this year, but given the how thin the field of contenders was, that's hardly worth bragging about. That being said, I think the final five are a perfectly respectable lineup; Naturally I would think that, having myself nominated all of them for my awards for writing. Still, it would have been nice to see the writing branch look outside the box at contenders like Short Term 12, The Spectacular Now, or Blue is the Warmest Color (The latter two of which I haven't seen yet, but have heard good things).

Anyway, on to the actual nominees, from whom the eventual winner looks to be fairly obvious.

My Award nominations: Adapted Screenplay

I hate to be a downer (the whole reason I blog at all is to celebrate the movies), but I gotta admit: weak year for Adapted Screenplays. I struggled to find five that I felt merited awards consideration. And in a normal year, my "Just missed" titles wouldn't even be third tier contenders.

But it is what it is, and the five that I did decide on are still fine works. Read about them after the cut.

Writers Guild nominations

Hot on the heals of yesterday's PGA announcement, the WGA has chimed in with their selections for the year's best screenplays... at least those that were eligible. It rankles every year that a number of the most highly touted films of the year are not qualified for the guild's honour, and this year's list of ineligibilities include likely Oscar nominees 12 Years a Slave and Philomena, among others.

Full list of nominees (and comments) after the cut.

Reviews - Philomena and The Wolf of Wall Street

Late December is often a time for family, but it's also a time for glutting on awards season movies, with multiple high-profile titles being released weekly. Naturally, families head out to the theatre on their precious days off in early winter, but finding the right flick for everyone can be a challenge.

To help you narrow things down (ever so slightly), here is a two-fisted review for a double feature I call the “Take-Your-Mom///DON'T-Take-Your-Mom Double Bill”. The comprising films: Philomena and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Now far be it for me to presume your mother's cinematic tastes, but if (like many people's moms) she's one of those Downton Abbey devotees who prefers lite drama of the genteel variety, or is simply convinced that British film and television is 'just better' than everything else, then it's hard to imagine her disliking Philomena.

Based on the 2009 non-fiction The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by journalist Martin Sixsmith (played in the film by Steve Coogan, who also co-produced and co-wrote the screenplay), it follows the travails of a darling old Irish woman (Judi Dench in the title role) as she and Sixsmith attempt to track down the long lost son that was taken from her fifty years ago. The jaded Sixsmith is only there to write a human interest story, a project which the former political correspondent considers quite beneath him. But as a surrogate mother-son relationship develops between the two, it isn't so unpredictable to see that Philomena has more to teach him than he realizes.