News: December 2007 Archives

"Atonement" lead the Golden Globes nominations last week, but the Screen Actors Guild utterly ignored the film in today's nominations for its own awards. Same thing for the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp film adaptation of the musical "Sweeney Todd" — four Globes nods, no SAGs.

This is further proof that this year's Oscar race is wide open and voters haven't reached any real concensus yet about what's best — except for Javier Bardem's performance in "No Country for Old Men."

That means this year's Oscar show could be an entertaining nail-biter — if the show goes on. C'mon, writers and studios, work it out!

Oscar and the Golden Globes will have to go without WGA writers on their telecasts, barring any last-minute reprieves.

That’s the bottom line from a dramatic rebuff of both awards shows made public Monday night, though Oscar has gotten only a portion of the bad news so far.

The WGA said Monday night that it has nixed a writing-waiver request from producers of the Golden Globes telecast and also a request for some clips clearances for the Oscars. But a WGA insider said a decision also has been made — though not announced — to reject a request for a writing waiver for the Oscars as well. ...

Variety posts an informative article today about how the ongoing writers strike will affect Oscar season. Several of the shows have asked the Writers Guild of America for a waiver, which would allow striking writers to work on jokes, monologues and speeches for the stars. No word yet on whether the Globes will get its waiver — and nominations are revealed tomorrow morning — but the WGA has granted such a waiver to the 14th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. But the real question is, waivers or none, will the stars still attend the shows if the strike marches on?

ABC also has this story about what the shows might be like without writers. It ain't pretty.

Time movie critic Richard Corliss just posted an insightful examination of the motivation behind the critics' awards in LA and NY and beyond. Despite the headline, "Do Film Critics Know Anything?," it's not another marginalization of arts critics. "By the time I'd got back to my office, I had realized that we critics may give these awards to the winners, but we give them for ourselves," he writes. "In fact, we're essentially passing notes to one another, admiring our connoisseurship at the risk of ignoring the vast audience that sees movies and the smaller one that reads us."

Once again, we begin posting AP's occasional list of honors the top movies are winning leading up to the Oscars ...