Hello, blog readers. Look at my current guesses for the Oscar 10 on the predictions page. Now look below at this morning’s Producer’s Guild Award nominations. Now back to my predictions. Now back to the nominations. Sadly, my predictions are exactly the same as these nominations.
Refusing to throw us Oscar prognosticators a bone of controversy in the rapidly solidifying race for a Best Picture nomination, the producers nominated exactly what most people predicted they would. No “Star Trek” wild card this year. It seems the only question left with the 10 is whether plucky indie “Winter’s Bone” can bump out “The Town” or “127 Hours.” All three got an equal amount of love from the SAG nominations (one nod each), and the Writer’s Guild nominations had way too many disqualified titles to be of any use in making predictions (besides “Winter’s Bone,” “The King’s Speech,” “Toy Story 3,” “Another Year,” “Never Let Me Go,” “The Way Back,” “The Ghost Writer,” “Blue Valentine” and “Made in Dagenham” were all ruled ineligible by the WGA). Though that opened the door for “Please Give” and “I Love You, Phillip Morris” to get some unexpected recognition from the writers, it does nothing to enlighten the “Winter’s Bone”/”The Town”/”127 Hours” battle.
I’m betting the slate ends up looking exactly the same and “Winter’s Bone” stays on the outside looking in. The producers are usually all about the money, so it was really no surprise “The Town” won out here. I think that will hold for the Oscars as well. The full list of nominees, if you need ’em:
Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Producer(s) of the Year:
- Black Swan
- The Fighter
- Inception
- The Kids Are All Right
- The King’s Speech
- 127 Hours
- The Social Network
- The Town
- Toy Story 3
- True Grit
Outstanding Producer for an Animated Film:
- Despicable Me
- How to Train Your Dragon
- Toy Story 3
Outstanding Producer for a Documentary Film:
- Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
- Earth Made of Glass
- Inside Job
- Smash His Camera
- The Tillman Story
- Waiting for ‘Superman’
The Best Films of Our Lives 
Why did the WGA disqualify all those films? Not “original”?
No, no, the WGA is particularly stringent about only nominating films that were produced “under WGA jurisdiction.” I’ve never been clear on what exactly that means, though I know you have to at least be a member of the guild to get nominated (hence why Tarantino never qualifies, since he told the guild to shove it a long time ago). The DGA, PGA and SAG all are willing to nominate films that weren’t necessarily produced under their jurisdiction.