Producers Guild Nominees

While awards season has been in full swing for over a month now, most of the groups that have announced - various critics groups, the NBR, and the HFPA - don't have much, if any, bearing on the eventual Oscar race, as said groups have no overlap with the Academy.  Not so with the guilds, which have plenty of overlap with the Academy.  Thus, when wanting to do some serious Oscar prognosticating, one would be wise to look at the Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and Writers Guild Awards.  (There are also similar groups/awards for most of the technical categories.)

Today's Producers Guild Award nominees give us an idea of what the Best Picture lineup this year might look like.  Last year's PGA lineup almost lined up perfectly with the Best Picture nominees, with one exception: The Town lost out to Winter's Bone for the Oscar nod.

This year, the most likely candidate to lose its spot is perhaps Bridesmaids.  Paul Feig's hilarious comedy is certainly one of the year's best movies, and it fully deserves to be nominated for Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actress, and Original Screenplay.  But the Academy notoriously shies away from awarding comedies.  Bridesmaids bold, bawdy, girls behaving badly seems like the furthest thing away from Oscar bait.  After all, these are the people who chose stuffy The King's Speech over much worthier picks last year.

But Bridesmaids is also the film that benefits most from scoring a nomination.  The film also snagged two SAG nominations, including the much-coveted Best Ensemble, which is that guild's equivalent of Best Picture.  While it will miss out on a DGA nomination, it should easily score with the WGA, especially since their rules always prevent prevalent films from being nominated (The Artist is the most notably ineligible film this year).  With support from three of the four major guilds, Bridesmaids could very well make it to the Best Picture race.  That's the kind of far-spread support that makes a movie a viable contender.

Today's PGA nominations also bode well for David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which many believe is too dark for Academy tastes, and George Clooney's The Ides of March, which has been largely dismissed despite being such a finely-made film.

The biggest loser today is my favorite film of the year: Terrence Malick's masterpiece, The Tree of Life.  The film will have to fight hard to gain some Oscar traction - a WGA or DGA nod would be huge, but if the season continues in its current vein, the year's most daring, beautiful film may become a bridesmaid to Bridesmaids' bride.  Drive also failed to secure a slot, but the film's brutal violence makes it a dark horse in the race anyways.  Director Nicolas Winding Refn could be a surprise nominee with the DGA, but if not, the film's Oscar hopes will probably rest only with Albert Brooks for Best Supporting Actor.

The WGA nominees will be announced Thursday, while the DGA announce next Monday.  By this time next week, we'll have a better idea of what to expect come January 24, when the Oscar nominations are announced.

The PGA nominees:

The Artist
Bridesmaids
The Descendants
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
The Ides of March
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
War Horse


The animated nominees:

The Adventures of Tintin
Cars 2
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango


The documentary nominees:

Beats, Rhymes, & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
Bill Cunningham New York
Project Nim
Senna
The Union