PGA Award Nominations & Winners

[Sonic Youth]

I'm happy for the Nolan fans. It's proof that if you're just a little patient, the ultimate recognition will eventually arrive. (Put aside that for some - Lynch, Altman, etc. - it never happens.)

But I will never get this one.

[Sabin]

Best Theatrical Feature: Oppenheimer
Best Animated Film: Spider-Verse: Across the Spider-Verse
Best Documentary: American Symphony

Oppenheimer joins The King's Speech and Argo as the only films since the Best Picture expansion to sweep all four major precursor wins (SAG, BAFTA, DGA & PGA). It feels like it's become a less common occurrence since the Best Picture expansion but maybe just a little. In the ten years prior, American Beauty, The Return of the King, and Slumdog Millionaire did. That's a little more frequent but not significantly.

[Sabin]

Okri wrote
Ah, yes, I forgot about your Les Miserables distaste. But I also wonder - what makes a strong year? The highest highs? The avoidance of the lowest lows? The winner itself?

I can tell you my opinion.

2012 is the only year since the Best Picture expansion where the majority of the nominees had a Best Picture heft to them. I could easily envision more than one of them winning Best Picture. I'm not talking about them in terms of how much I personally loved the films but it's the only year where winnowing the lineup down to five would've been real task. I honestly don't know what a lineup of five would look like. Also, it's one of the only years since the expansion where I could see more than a couple of the films winning.

Even some years like 2013 where I might like some of the films more, if Captain Phillips, Her, or Nebraska doesn't make the final five, it's understandable. But in 2012, if somehow Django Unchained, Les Miserables, or Zero Dark Thirty didn't, it would be a major story.

[Okri]

re: The Color Purple

When I was thinking of it as a best picture nominee, it was because I thought SAG AND the general public would go for it in a big way. I didn't give my credence to the fact that it was "avoiding" the festivals because I don't really think in those terms/consistently have that awareness. Now, I don't think the gross is all the bad (Nine, the comparison many are making, tapped out below 20 million), but obviously, relative to it's budget it's not a success. It specifically needed to be the shiny thing at the right time. It wasn't that.

re: bumped films

I mean, mostly commercial phenomena. The Whale made the PGA last year. They went for Nightcrawler instead of Selma... It's actually bizarre to look back at some years. They went for Blue Jasmine over Philomena, but the latter made more money (it's pretty close, but still)

But honestly, I don't think I'm gonna get to see All of Us Stranger in theatres without a best picture nomination and I'm feeling quite ornery about that.

re: 2012

Ah, yes, I forgot about your Les Miserables distaste. But I also wonder - what makes a strong year? The highest highs? The avoidance of the lowest lows? The winner itself?

[Mister Tee]

i think the difference between this year and all those others is, in the previous years, the bumped films were all ones we thought might be bumped, because they were too trivial for the Oscars -- Knives Out, Wakanda Forever, Crazy Rich Asians, A Quite Place were commercial phenomena that a gaggle of producers might want to salute, but an Academy that (however haphazardly) purported to support art would tend to ignore.

But where is such an entry on this year's list? The closest any film comes is Barbie, simply by profile, but its quality/ambition-quotient is in another dimension from those omittees. Could something like Zone of Interest or Anatomy of a Fall conceivably be omitted from a more serious slate after acing the populist test? Hard to see how. It's going to be difficult to make much case for any but these ten as the AMPAS roster.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
Except for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and One Night in Miami... in 2020, which could have been added to Oscar's 8 nominees, the Academy's selections and omissions made more sense.

Possibly. Or maybe Another Round? After all, the director's branch went for it.

[Big Magilla]

-in 2022: the PGA went 7/10, honoring Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion and The Whale instead of All Quiet on the Western Front, Triangle of Sadness, Women Talking.
-in 2021: the PGA went 8/10, honoring Being the Ricardos & Tick, Tick... Boom! instead of Drive My Car & Nightmare Alley.
-in 2020: the PGA went 8/10, honoring Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, One Night in Miami... instead of The Father (there were only 8 nominees that year).
-in 2019: the PGA nominated Knives Out, which was left out of the Oscar's 9 nominees.
-in 2018: the PGA nominated Crazy Rich Asians and A Quiet Place, which didn't make the Academy's 8.

Except for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and One Night in Miami... in 2020, which could have been added to Oscar's 8 nominees, the Academy's selections and omissions made more sense.

[mlrg]

I think we need to contextualize The Color Purple's box office performance. If you look back at past Tyler Perry films, they had a similar great debut and subsequent quick fade.

From that context, I really don't think it should be considered a flop. It got an A CinemaScore, which is from the target audience, so it was clearly well liked. It has a 7.7 on IMDb, which is only .1 lower than Anatomy of a Fall's 7.8. Killers of the Flower moon also has a 7.8. It has a 73 at MetaCritic, which is arguably pretty good. It's not among the best scores of the year, but I certainly wouldn't call it a flop.

The Color Purple has 3.7 on letterboxd which is pretty average at this point.

The score of the 10 nominated by PGA is:

“American Fiction” (MGM) 3.8
“Anatomy of a Fall” (Neon) 4.2
“Barbie” (Warner Bros.) 3.9
“The Holdovers” (Focus Features) 4.2
“Killers of the Flower Moon” (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) 4.2
“Maestro” (Netflix) 3.3
“Oppenheimer” (Universal Pictures) 4.3
“Past Lives” (A24) 4.2
“Poor Things” (Searchlight Pictures) 4.3
“The Zone of Interest” (A24) 4.1

[Sabin]

I put some stats below for the past five or so years. Basically, this category tends to get 7-8 right out of whatever the final roster tally is.

Right now, we're at the point in the race where we're all looking around the room for what else could be the nominees, like The Color Purple, May December, etc. I don't think that's going to happen. I think these are the ten. Here's my reason.

At least in recent years, whenever the PGA nominates a movie that doesn't go onto a Best Picture nomination, it's usually a case of the PGA nominates something a little too light, middlebrow, milquetoast, or populist and the Academy goes for something more discerning, like Triangle of Sadness over Knives Out 2. This year, it looks like the Producer's Guild went the discerning route. Chalk it up to Neon and A24 making the most of their strike vouchers, the end of the year got too bunched, whatever. Right now, I'm asking myself what could replace Anatomy of a Fall or The Zone of Interest in the Best Picture lineup and usually that question would be reversed. I would be looking at films like Babylon, Tick, Tick... Boom!, or One Night in Miami and asking if enough voters have seen Anatomy of a Fall or The Zone of Interest for them to be credible threats. I'd be saying that before Anatomy of a Fall won two Golden Globes (for Screenwriting) and before The Zone of Interest won the LAFCA.

The only question I can think of is whether or not there's a Phantom Thread in the wings. Our returned friend Sijmen didn't even list Phantom Thread in the running for Best Picture. I'm referring to something late-starting (or not), perhaps by someone in the Academy's club, which has a lot of enthusiasm that isn't reflected in the precursors. The only things I can think of are All of Us Strangers, The Iron Claw, May December, or Saltburn. None of them feel like good bets.

OscarGuy wrote
I think we need to contextualize The Color Purple's box office performance. If you look back at past Tyler Perry films, they had a similar great debut and subsequent quick fade.

Which is why they don't cost $100m.

[Mister Tee]

If this turns out to be the AMPAS 10, can you remember a better slate? Of the 8 I've seen to date, Maestro is probably the least good -- and i mostly quite liked Maestro. (The two remaining are Poor Things and the Zone of Interest, and seeing how they're among the year's most acclaimed, it's hard to imagine them falling short.)

Hmm.... maybe 2012? I know you weren't the biggest fan of Beasts of the Southern Wild, but I thought that was a terrific lineup. Argo's not a great winner which punctures it a little.

Les Miz is actually my worst of that bunch, I'm not wild about Django Unchained, and I find Argo, while pleasant, truly undistinguished. (Much like Air, which, rightly, is getting no traction in this year's impressive company.)

I might like the 2013 crop better overall -- it has higher highs -- but then there's Philomena and Dallas Buyer's Club to foul the nest. Much like Jojo Rabbit and Ford v. Ferrari in 2019, or Darkest Hour in 2017.

I could entertain 2010 as another I-don't-dislike-any-of-these group, though some (like The Kids Are All Right and The King's Speech) are simply quite respectable.

It's possible this current year looks especially good after three consecutive weak vintages.

ETA: I look forward to reading your thoughts o American Fiction. It's finally been released here but I don't think I'll make it this weekend.

One of the drawbacks of getting sick right on Christmas is I fall behind on those things I'd seen just before the holiday and anything after. I never even posted on May December, and I've still got American Fiction and Ferrari in the backlog. Eventually, I'll get to them all.

[Okri]

If this turns out to be the AMPAS 10, can you remember a better slate? Of the 8 I've seen to date, Maestro is probably the least good -- and i mostly quite liked Maestro. (The two remaining are Poor Things and the Zone of Interest, and seeing how they're among the year's most acclaimed, it's hard to imagine them falling short.)

Hmm.... maybe 2012? I know you weren't the biggest fan of Beasts of the Southern Wild, but I thought that was a terrific lineup. Argo's not a great winner which punctures it a little.

For me, at 7 of 10, little less enthusiastic overall.

ETA: I look forward to reading your thoughts o American Fiction. It's finally been released here but I don't think I'll make it this weekend.

[Sabin]

-in 2022: the PGA went 7/10, honoring Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion and The Whale instead of All Quiet on the Western Front, Triangle of Sadness, Women Talking.
-in 2021: the PGA went 8/10, honoring Being the Ricardos & Tick, Tick... Boom! instead of Drive My Car & Nightmare Alley.
-in 2020: the PGA went 8/10, honoring Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, One Night in Miami... instead of The Father (there were only 8 nominees that year).
-in 2019: the PGA nominated Knives Out, which was left out of the Oscar's 9 nominees.
-in 2018: the PGA nominated Crazy Rich Asians and A Quiet Place, which didn't make the Academy's 8.

[OscarGuy]

I think we need to contextualize The Color Purple's box office performance. If you look back at past Tyler Perry films, they had a similar great debut and subsequent quick fade.

From that context, I really don't think it should be considered a flop. It got an A CinemaScore, which is from the target audience, so it was clearly well liked. It has a 7.7 on IMDb, which is only .1 lower than Anatomy of a Fall's 7.8. Killers of the Flower moon also has a 7.8. It has a 73 at MetaCritic, which is arguably pretty good. It's not among the best scores of the year, but I certainly wouldn't call it a flop.

[Greg]

If this turns out to be the AMPAS 10, can you remember a better slate?

It would probably rank with the most-celebrated slates of 1939 and 1972. Although, 1972 was a five-nominations-only slate.

[Big Magilla]

All of Us Strangers and Saltburn would be the two I could see upsetting the ten with AMPAS if they do well with BAFTA, not Air, The Color Purple, or May December which always struck me as also-runs.