"Social Network" wins Scripter

The University of Southern California Scripter Award honors excellence in adaptation; they award both the author of the source material and the screenwriter.

The Social Network earned this year's prize.

Ben Mezrich, who wrote The Accidental Billionaires, and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin were honored.

A case for 'The Social Network'

It's not just coming back for 30%. It's coming back for everything. Maybe.

But wait, isn't the Oscar race "over"? Hasn't The King's Speech virtually locked Best Picture after winning the PGA, DGA, and SAG? Statistically, it sure has. But for those of us still holding out hope, still trying to find some conceivable way to imagine a scenario where The Social Network at least wins Best Director if not Best Picture.

And no, I'm not buying the "different voting bodies" argument, which goes something like this: The people who vote on the PGA, DGA, and SAG are not the people who vote on the Oscars. True. But some of the people who vote on the guilds vote on the Oscars, and none of the people who vote on the Globes vote on the Oscars. So, given statistics and history, I refuse to ever use that as an argument.

"Inception" wins big at Visual Effects Society

Best Visual Effects in a Visual-Effects Driven Picture: Inception
Best Supporting Visual Effects: Hereafter
Best Animation in an Animated Feature: How to Train Your Dragon
Best Animated Character in a Live Action Feature: Dobby from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Best Animated Character in an Animated Feature: Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon
Best Effects Animation in an Animated Feature: How to Train Your Dragon
Best Created Environment in a Live Action Feature: Paris Dreamscape from Inception
Best Models and Miniatures: Inception - Hospital Fortress Destruction
Best Compositing: Inception

Check out the new, informative sidebar

To help keep things organized as we head into the last month of the race, I've created a sidebar with all the nominees and everything they've won so far. I've organized each category based on who I perceive to be the frontrunner, and will be updating this as we hear more announcements from different guilds, the British Academy, etc.

Aside from letting you see who has won what, you can also see the difference between critics groups like Los Angeles Film Critics Association and industry groups like the Screen Actors Guild.

My hope is that this will make discussions more economical and easier to follow. To make things cleaner, I won't include mentions for nominees (such as putting a [BAFTA] indication next to things nominated for the British Academy) but will add an indication once those winners are announced.

There is no sweep yet

Now that The King's Speech has turned this from a predictable Oscars race to an unpredictable Oscars race and then straight back to predictable in a mere two weeks (and let's not bemoan that fact, the time between the Critics Choice and the Screen Actors Guild has made this one of the most interesting years since 2006), there are some who are not simply saying the Best Picture race is over, they're saying the whole darn thing is sewn up.

The King's Speech performing a coup de grace sweep? I'm not buying that yet, but that's partially because the technical guilds (the American Society of Cinematographers, the American Cinema Editors, the Cinema Audio Society, etc) haven't announced yet, and I'm hard-pressed to believe Speech will dominate there, or at the Oscars.

The last time there was an out-and-out sweep was Slumdog Millionaire, which won eight. Certainly, Hurt Locker's six-win stand counted as a pretty bold win, but apart from those years, the previous Best Picture winners had four wins (No Country, The Departed), three (Crash), and four (Million Dollar Baby). I think even if The King's Speech is destined to win, there's going to be some wealth going around.

The Fighters: SAG winners, Oscar hopefuls

Much like last year, it seems all four acting categories have converged on four performances: I cannot see anyone else winning these categories aside from Firth, Portman, Leo, and Bale, who all won the Critics Choice, Golden Globe and now the Screen Actors Guild.

The only way it's possible is if King's Speech were to surge so much that Rush takes Supporting Actor.

But I would like to make an observation: all four of these performances are about people fighting for their own sake. Bale's drug-addled ex-boxer fights to get clean and to do right by his brother, Leo's manipulative mother fights to understand what's best for her son and for what she believes are the smart choices, Firth's King George fights to overcome his stammer so he can be a leader for his people, and Portman fights her own unconscious in her quest to be perfect. Maybe that's the industry is responding to this year, films and performances about our desire to try and better ourselves.


They are four very unique performances, four very demanding and uncompromising performances. I think you'd have to be a fool not to pick them at this point. The only show left is the BAFTA in two weeks.

The only other question: how far will The King's Speech go? It did not qualify for the WGA award, so David Seidler will sit that one out. It will almost certainly win the BAFTA, but what else? Costume Design Guild? Art Directors Guild? Or will Inception and The Social Network make some last minute stands for glory. With Speech winning all three major guilds it was nominated for, this has suddenly become a tale of two races: no film has ever won as many precursors as The Social Network did, and no film (to my knowledge) that has won PGA, DGA and SAG has gone on to lose Best Picture. What a race.

Screen Actors Guild Award winners

Best Cast Ensemble: The King's Speech
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Colin Firth for The King's Speech
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Natalie Portman for Black Swan
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Christian Bale for The Fighter
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Melissa Leo for The Fighter

Screen Actors preview

Tonight at 8 p.m. on TNT, the Screen Actors become the third guild to shepherd in their choices on the heels of a rather dramatic King's Speech coup of the PGA and DGA. Will they join the tide? Will they pull The Social Network back into the fray? Or, will they go a totally different direction?

The SAG is not the guild to end all guilds. Over the last few years, its top prize, the Best Ensemble award, has gone to: Inglourious Basterds, Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, Little Miss Sunshine, Crash, Sideways, The Lord of the Rings, Chicago, Gosford Park and Traffic. Six of the last ten years, the Ensemble winner has not gone on to win Best Picture. Three of the four times it has happened, it's been a "sweep" year; Crash is the outlier (its only guild win before winning Best Picture was here).

In defense of Tom Hooper

I'm not going to lie, the Directors Guild of America awards were pretty devastating. I of course was cheering for David Fincher, but would have been perfectly content to see Nolan, Aronofsky, or Russell take a surprise win. But for some reason, a largely inexplicable reason at that, director Tom Hooper of The King's Speech received the award, and in the process stuck a fork in the Oscar race.

When you've been watching/writing about the Oscar race for several years, following it from NBR to Oscar night, you kind of learn to stop caring and not mind what happens. Did I think Slumdog Millionaire deserved its runaway success? No way, but I was happy for Danny Boyle. Was I angry that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was slapped in the face by shutting its creator out of the 2008 race? You bet, but Heath Ledger won his posthumous award, and that felt okay. Even in years where the films and people I want to see win have won -- Scorsese/The Departed in 2006 and the Coens/No Country for Old Men in 2007, it's never really about the Oscars; they're a game, a marker of how the industry wants to project itself. In the end, the movies survive with or without awards, and I often forget No Country for Old Men actually won Best Picture.

So on a morning where the blogosphere is pretty much collapsing with proclamations of "worst awards season ever" and "the Oscar race is over" and other mostly reactive and childish rants on the subject, I thought it would be better to step back and think about this in a more neutral way.

Tom Hooper wins Directors Guild

The King's Speech picks up its second major win in as many weeks, with director Tom Hooper winning the pivotal Directors Guild of America award, an honor most were predicting would go to The Social Network's David Fincher.

Despite losing the Critics Choice and the Golden Globe to The Social Network, King's Speech has had a dramatic turnaround: winning the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild, and earning the most Oscar nominations all within a seven-day stretch, it's suddenly gone from being the underdog to the frontrunner in what's fast becoming one of the most fierce Oscar seasons in recent memory. The DGA winner has gone on to win the Best Director Oscar for the past seven years.

As this news is just announced, and it's now 2:30 a.m. here on the east coast, I will be providing a full write-up in the morning that segues into the Screen Actors Guild preview.