OSCARLAND: Producers Guild Nominations

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

The calendar has turned to 2014, and the critics, for the most part, have spoken.  Now Oscar season is moving into the Guild part of its schedule, and today the Producers Guild announced its Best Picture nominees.  The PGAs have been a fairly accurate precursor of Oscar nominees, with 8 of its picks last year hitting Oscar’s list of 9, and 7 of 9 the previous year.  (The PGA’s choice of winner, on the other hand, is incredibly accurate–all of the last 6 Oscar winners won the PGA first, and 17 of the last 24.)  Many of these were what have come to be the usual suspects, but there was at least one surprise.  In alphabetical order:

AMERICAN HUSTLE

BLUE JASMINE

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

GRAVITY

HER

NEBRASKA

SAVING MR. BANKS

12 YEARS A SLAVE

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

The big winner here is Blue Jasmine, which had gotten notice up to now far more for Cate Blanchett’s performance than for the film itself.  Also, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Nebraska and Saving Mr. Banks, which have been on some lists and off others, get another notch in their credibility belts.  None of the Weinstein Company’s candidates (The Butler, Fruitvale Station–which had previously been named the winner of the organization’s Stanley Kramer Award for socially conscious filmmaking–Philomena, August: Osage County, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom) made the list, and neither did Inside Llewyn Davis, All Is Lost, Lone Survivor or Rush.

The PGA also nominates 5 animated features, with The Croods and Epic getting the nod to join the expected Despicable Me 2, Frozen and Monsters University.