Wow, the Producer’s Guild of America (PGA) have spoken: 2009 was the year of populist sci-fi not regular Academy Awards fare.
Despite the general consensus that the award season would neglect the genre’s lesser hits when push came to shove, “District 9” and “Star Trek” both earned nominations and joined “Avatar” in the PGA’s ten picks to make it three from three.
Notable omissions from the ten include The Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man,” big names Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” and Rob Marshall’s “Nine,” contenders many thought might penetrate the Oscar 10 Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger” or Tom Ford “A Single Man,” but no real surprises for the exclusion of Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” unfortunately.
“Up” meanwhile earned nominations in both the Best Picture equivalent and Best Animated Feature. The question on everyone’s lips though is whether anything can upset the precursor dominance of Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker”?
Without further ado, here are the picks:
Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures:
AVATAR
DISTRICT 9
AN EDUCATION
THE HURT LOCKER
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
INVICTUS
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE
STAR TREK
UP
UP IN THE AIR
PGA Producer of the Year Award in Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures:
9
CORALINE
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG
UP
PGA Producer of the Year Award in Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures:
BURMA VJ
The COVE
SERGIO
SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION
Is this the way the Oscar 10 will look? The PGAs are obviously the single-most important bellwether in predicting the Oscar nominations outcome so it’s not looking good.
We can be at least thankful that “The Blind Side” was looked over, but “Star Trek,” really? A fun action sci-fi movie, but a Best Picture contender? Is the PGA trying to predict what the Oscar 10 will be? One might assume with 10 picks this year, there might be more discrepancies between the PGA and Oscar than usual, but nerds are rejoicing right now, they’ll have a major seat at the table this year, at least at the PGAs, but the 10 picks are turning out to be everyone’s biggest worry; the year when escapist entertainment fare (fun, but not really awards worthy) took over. If Oscar goes the same way and credibility they’ve accrued is going to go right out the window. Then again, with the 10 Best Pics move designed to attract audiences and make-up for skipping over populist fare like, “The Dark Knight” and “Wall-E” last year, the results are essentially, exactly what they intended. Blegh.
Maybe this in the end will be a cautionary tale/warning sign to the Academy voters? Let’s hope so…
