The Producers Guild of America didn’t clarify much of anything tonight by giving its Best Picture award to both 12 YEARS A SLAVE and GRAVITY. That provided all 3 of the presumed frontrunners with a prize for the weekend, since SAG gave its top award to AMERICAN HUSTLE last night. With the Directors Guild widely expected to go with Alfonso Cuaron and Gravity next week, and 12 Years ineligible for the Writers Guild award, we appear to be in a genuinely wide-open race–especially since the logjam at the top could conceivably allow some less predictable one of the other 6 nominees to sneak in. Gravity certainly benefits from tonight’s surprise, since it wasn’t expected to win anything, and Hustle is dented a bit by the loss (although it wasn’t favored with the PGA), but as to 12 Years, a winner forced to share the spotlight? Anyone’s guess.
The PGA also gave its Best Animated Feature award to overwhelming favorite FROZEN, while its Best Documentary award won’t have any relevance to the Oscar race, since winner WE STEAL SECRETS wasn’t nominated for the Academy Award.
In addition, the PGA gave out several TV awards, with standbys MODERN FAMILY, BREAKING BAD and BEHIND THE CANDELABRA winning the marquee prizes.
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>We'll have some analysis later (good news: Extremely Loud! Margin Call for Screenplay! Bad news: no Michael Fassbender? No David Fincher?), but for now, here's a link to the full list of Oscar nominees:http://oscar.go.com/nominees?cid=ealert_012412_oscars_nom_nomindex_oscarpagevideovisitorsSent via BlackBerry by AT&T
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About the Author
Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."
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