1. Paramount Clearly Made a Screener Mistake
If there's been a recurring theme this cycle, it's been that Selma has clearly had a problem with screeners. The Ava DuVernay biopic has been missing nominations with a number of guilds, including SAG, before this where they were largely ignored due to the voting body not having access to screeners, and this was the case yesterday, when the likely Best Picture nominee went home empty-handed.
It's worth noting that American Sniper was one of the biggest winners yesterday, as the Clint Eastwood biopic ended up with a nomination despite being, like Selma, in limited release. The Eastwood film smartly chose to get out its screeners, which certainly helped in this regard, and proved a clear lesson for future Oscar campaigns: you either need to send a screener to all of the major awards bodies, or you need to open your film wide enough so that the general populace can see your picture they vote. The reason for this is quite simple: Selma will likely still do quite well with the Academy (who did get screeners), but films like Boyhood, The Imitation Game, and Birdman will all be winning a number of these precursor awards when Selma is going to be stalled for momentum during the run-up to the Oscars. As we saw with something like Argo a few years ago, in a tight race wins in places like the PGA Awards are critical to taking the Oscar.
We continued to see how this year may be the most volatile in a while when it comes to who actually makes the cut with Oscar. While movies like Her and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close have scored surprise nominations through the years with the new system of a "random" number of nominations with Best Picture, the limited number of Best Picture nominees means we don't know precisely how many films will be nominated for the top category. This means that momentum past what is considered the "solid five" (Selma, Birdman, Boyhood, The Imitation Game, and The Theory of Everything) is critical, and not as uniform as it may seem. There are certain films like Foxcatcher and Nightcrawler, both nominated yesterday, that have clearly maintained a steady amount of momentum, even if they aren't what you'd consider a "traditional" nominee for Best Picture. As the next couple of weeks progress, one of the questions that will remain unknown until nomination day is how many films are nominated for the Oscars' top slot. If it's only 5-6, these sorts of passion projects are probably going to be left in the cold, but if the Academy wants to commit to 9-10 Best Picture nominations, it now seems as if these movies will be amongst the lucky selected.
3. The PGA Awards Were Less Populist Than Usual
With the more prestigious awards not named Oscar, it's important to note that what distinguishes them is partially what makes them prestigious, but here, it's the PGA's populist wing that you want to keep in mind when it comes to framing up with Oscar. A film like Guardians of the Galaxy or, in particular, Interstellar is going to matter more-the merging of commerce and prestige is usually their sweet spot, and in the past they've gone for something that Oscar wouldn't have touched like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, or Star Trek. The lack of a nomination for Interstellar here likely takes it out of the running for a shock Best Picture nomination with the Oscars (it's worth noting that Gone Girl's success at the PGA should slightly be attributed to being such a massive hit). Films like Into the Woods and Unbroken could both also be considered problematic for missing here, though their Box Office status was revealed after voting ended, so they could still sneak in with Oscar (though it'd probably help with Unbroken in particular if it could grab a major nomination SOMEWHERE before Oscar, and at this point only BAFTA and the DGA remain in terms of major citations before AMPAS).
The Best Director field, which is set for only five nominations for the Oscars, has perhaps the biggest wild card slot we've seen in a few years for a major category. While Ava DuVernay, Richard Linklater, Morten Tyldum, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu all should be considered above the field (in the case of Linklater and Inarritu, mortal locks), the final slot could go almost any direction. You have of course the seven men who directed a PGA-nominated film: Clint Eastwood (American Sniper), Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher), David Fincher (Gone Girl), Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler), Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel), James Marsh (The Theory of Everything), and Damian Chazelle (Whiplash), but stunningly that's not even the end of the list; you also have the directors of two late-breaking hits (Angelina Jolie for Unbroken and Rob Marshall for Into the Woods), as well as the possibility that the director's field go for an old-favorite like Paul Thomas Anderson (Inherent Vice), or my personal nagging feeling, Mike Leigh (Mr. Turner), who snuck into a field out of the blue just like this a decade ago with Vera Drake. The field should be winnowed, or at least crystallized a bit, by the DGA soon, but even then that award is historically more accurate for the Best Picture, rather than the Best Director, race, and considering the screener-problem that has plagued Selma, we could have likely Oscar nominee Ava DuVernay missing there as well. All-in-all, this is one of those categories where someone's about to be extremely lucky and nab a nomination out of a field of nearly a dozen major contenders, but we have no idea who quite yet.
5. The Book of Life: Can It Land the Final Slot?
The Annie Awards, the Golden Globes, and now the PGA Awards have all handed out their nominations, meaning the only major awards-body that hasn't weighed in is the Oscars when it comes to animation, and in all three cases The Book of Life managed to gain a citation in what most presume is the fifth place slot amongst the contenders. The film, which did well with critics (82% at Rotten Tomatoes), but had middling Box Office, looks like a contender, and definitely is one (you don't hit all of those boxes and not make a realistic play for the Oscars), but I just can't see it making it quite yet. Oscar loves to honor foreign films, but it doesn't always take the opportunity. I remember two years ago when films like From Up on Poppy Hill and The Painting both seemed very strong for a final nomination, but in the end the Academy ended up going with Pirates! Band of Misfits. That could happen again this year, with all five of the nominations going to English-language films rather than something like Song of the Sea or Princess Kaguya, though I'm not quite at the point of predicting it. To add an extra wrinkle into this equation, two years ago it was Rise of the Guardians and not Pirates! that was supposed to be the fifth American nominee in the category, so something like Mr. Peabody and Sherman or Rio 2 could also be in the running and we don't know it yet. Finally, considering it's been the same five films in most nominees, it's quite possible that The Book of Life is actually a third or fourth place nominee, and something like The Boxtrolls or How to Train Your Dragon 2 is actually in the vulnerable position and could get a shock snub on Oscar nomination morning.
And those are my thoughts on yesterday's PGA nominations-what about yours? Where do you think things stand just a few weeks out from Oscars big announcement? Share in the comments!
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