After all, the unions and trade groups who hand out guild awards are often the same people who'll be voting for the Oscars. We already learned a lot from the Screen Actors Guild, who announced their nominations last month -- and who'll hand out their prizes at the end of January.
But this week, we heard from several other guilds -- including the Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, and the American Society of Cinematographers -- and our simple narrative about "Spotlight" being the runaway front-runner in an otherwise wide-open race has gone out the window.
But we have to remember, the predictive value of an NSFC award is virtually zero most years, and this year shouldn't be any different. And if we needed any reminders of whose choices matter and whose don't, we got several of them this week from the guilds -- starting with the American Cinema Editors.
The editors of the ACE threw the oddsmakers for a loop by leavIng "Spotlight" off their list of nominees. Their drama category includes such expected titles as "Mad Max: Fury Road," "The Martian," and "The Revenant." The ACE animation nominees are less controversial: Pixar's "Inside Out" and "The Good Dinosaur," along with Charlie Kaufman's stop-motion "Anomalisa." Granted, the ACE picks won't necessarily foretell the Academy nominees for Best Picture or even Best Editing, but no movie has won a Best Picture Oscar in 20 years without first being nominated for an Eddie. Tough break, "Spotlight" fans.
The writers liked "Spotlight," "Carol," and "Martian," as well as rising contenders "The Big Short" and "Compton." Of course, the WGA nominations come with a caveat: Only union members are eligible for nominations, which means they ignore most foreign scripts and some by non-member domestic writers. So that leaves out some likely Oscar screenplay contenders, including Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight," Hungarian drama "Son of Saul" (currently the front-runner for the foreign-language Oscar), "Inside Out" (the probable Best Animated Feature Oscar winner), "Anomalisa," "Brooklyn," "Room," "The Danish Girl," and "Ex Machina." Still, the WGA awards do have some predictive value. They may not get all the Oscar nominees right, but 22 of the 32 winners of the guild's Original and Adapted Screenplay honors over the past 16 years have gone on to win on Oscar night.
What do all these guild awards tell us? First of all, the race is still up for grabs, and "Spotlight" is far (ish) from a sure thing. Second, there's more support for "The Big Short," "Bridge," "Ex Machina," "Sicario," and "Compton" than one might have guessed a month ago. (And maybe less for "Carol," "Brooklyn," "Hateful Eight," and "Room.") Third, crowdpleasers that critics love -- including "Martian," "Mad Max," and "Star Wars" -- all still have a good shot. And fourth, because of the complexities of the Academy's weighted ballot system, the lack of strong support for almost all of these movies could mean as few as five Best Picture nominees this year, instead of the usual eight or nine. Which five have the most enthusiastic support, and which are merely well-liked but not loved, is still too hard to tell.
Finally, the Oscar nominations themselves will be announced on Thursday, January 14. At that point, none of the winners journalists have picked will matter anymore, and we'll focus entirely on what and whom the industry insiders choose.
%Slideshow-348022%
Thank you for reading the article about Oscars 2016: Here's Why the Best Picture Race Is Still Up for Grabs in blog amazing movies If this article was helpful please bookmark this page in your web browser by pressing Ctrl + D on your keyboard keys.