'Hurt Locker' Tops 'Avatar' At Producers Guild Awards

So this is interesting: After Avatar swept the major categories at the Golden Globes and Inglourious Basterds took Best Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, it looked like the window was closing fast on The Hurt Locker in the Best Picture race at the Academy Awards. However, it just won the coveted Producers Guild honors tonight and suddenly, it's back in the middle of the fight. The PGAs shouldn't necessarily be the direct link to Best Picture the way next weekend's Directors Guild Awards signal the Oscar in that category, because Best Picture is open to every voting member of the Academy and the other awards are not, and this award has a lower conversion rate than the DGAs, as well. Over the past decade, it's 50%, and only two of the past six winners here went on to take the Academy Award. If you follow trends, it's an unfortunate one for Avatar because those two in the past six years are the last two, Slumdog and No Country. However, we've maintained for weeks that this is a two-movie race, and it looks like, again, it's shaping up to come down to Hurt Locker and Avatar at the Oscars. Up in the Air has all but fallen out of contention for everything but adapted screenplay, and Inglourious Basterds - a true wild card that could steal votes from all three of this season's frontrunners - is likely just a wild card. I guess the best news for the Oscars is that now, we honestly don't know which way Best Picture will fall. The Globes don't mean anything, certainly no more than, say, a large group of film critics voting for the same award, but the PGAs do matter, and if it had gone to Avatar, this race would have probably been over tonight. And if the Directors Guild awards Kathryn Bigelow, which some observers have believed the entire awards season, then things get really interesting. There are only three film awards each year at the PGAs, and Up won for animated feature while The Cove picked up the documentary award. Neither of those is terribly surprising. So it looks like, even though 2009 was not a banner year for truly great films, it will be an Oscar ceremony with significant intrigue at the top. All the acting awards are pretty much spoken for, although I'll still allow for wiggle room at Best Actress, but Best Director and Best Picture seem to be the only major prizes with question marks. That's probably good for business.

Comments

[SEAN]

Thank goodness some people have some sense in them...............

[Nelson]

finally, a true RACE for the best picture award