The Producers Guild of America awards have been announced. As expected, Searching for Sugar Man took the Documentary prize while Wreck-It Ralph showed its first strength of the season with a win for Best Animated Feature (will it duplicate that feat at next week’s Annie Awards?). However, the big news here is the predictive capability of the PGA Best Picture prize. Argo wins. And were it not for the lack of a Best Director nomination, it would suddenly become the to-beat film. It goes into the Oscars now with three major precursor prizes and could easily make that four tomorrow night with SAG.
The Awards
Best Picture
Argo
Best Animated Feature
Wreck-It Ralph
Best Documentary
Searching for Sugar Man
Producers Guild of America Data
Year Founded: 1950 Film; 1957 TV; 1962 Unified First Awards: 1989 (24)
It’s possible. The only categories it seems to have a shot at winning other than Best Picture are Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Sound. It could win any of the categories it’s been nominated in. Most voters like to at least give films other prizes, but we’ll see.
Well, it seems as though the odd men out this year are the 300+ Director’s Branch of the Academy. Their increasingly baffling omission of Ben Affleck is the only reason why Argo isn’t the slam-dunk favorite to win this year’s Best Picture. The SAG and DGA may or may not clarify this situation. I wonder if SAG voters, when selecting Best Cast Performance really try to separate the film from the acting. Argo seems like it has a harder path if you look at the cast performances of some of the other competitors, as good as it is.
Lincoln reminds me of Avatar in that many were picking Avatar over The Hurt Locker even though it really won only the Globe with Hurt Locker winning most precursors. Lincoln has had an even more dismal precursor record for both picture and director. If Silver Linings Playbook pulls out a SAG cast award, it could be the alternative choice to Argo. Very interesting year.
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