Today in awards shows too numerous to keep track of, Argo wrapped up the last of the guild awards, taking home a WGA for screenwriting, after previously taking top honors in the PGA, DGA, and SAG, which all sound like complex euphemisms for handjobs to me. In a symbolic way, I suppose they are. I don’t like to brag, but the first line of the second paragraph of my Argo review was “this movie is going to clean up come awards season,” and I had Oscar in the headline. Basically, I’m the odds-on favorite to take home a Golden Toldja at this year’s bloggies, held in Harry Knowles’ boat shed.
Original Screenplay
Flight – John Gatins (Paramount Pictures)
Looper – Rian Johnson (TriStar Pictures)
The Master – Paul Thomas Anderson (The Weinstein Company)
Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola (Focus Features)
Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal (Columbia Pictures) – WINNERAdapted Screenplay
Argo – Chris Terrio (Warner Bros. Pictures) – WINNER
Life of Pi – David Magee (20th Century Fox)
Lincoln – Tony Kushner (DreamWorks Pictures)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky (Summit Entertainment)
Silver Linings Playbook – David O Russell (The Weinstein Company)Documentary
The Central Park Five – Sarah Burns, David McMahon and Ken Burns (Sundance Selects)
The Invisible War – Kirby Dick (Cinedigm Entertainment Group)
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God – Alex Gibney (HBO Films)
Searching for Sugar Man – Malik Bendejelloul (Sony Pictures Classics) – WINNER
We Are Legion – Brian Knappenberger (Cinetic Media)
West of Memphis – Amy J. Berg and Billy McMillin (Sony Pictures Classics)
Searching for Sugar Man is similarly dominating the documentary category, adding a WGA to its Critic’s Choice Award, BAFTA, and Golden Globe.
But to be fair, you have to question the judgment of any organization that nominated Flight and Perks of Being a Wallflower for writing awards. Denzel’s already-cheesy, you-knew-this-was-coming turning point relied on his hardly believable and never-before-referenced need to honor a dead chick, and the way the film communicated to the audience that its protagonist had learned a lesson was to have him give a big speech about the lesson he learned. A lesson that could’ve been any speech at an AA meeting. It was one of the more clumsily-written movies of the year. Even Argo, which I mostly liked, had a tacked-on, overly dramatic ending that felt like someone taking a real, already-compelling story and trying to Hollywood-ify it. And no nominations for Tarantino or Magic Mike or The Sessions? Ar-go f*ck yourself.
TV awards below:
Drama Series
Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad – WINNER
Game of Thrones
Homeland
Mad MenDrama (Episodic)
Breaking Bad – ‘Buyout’
Breaking Bad – ‘Dead Freight’
Breaking Bad – ‘Fifty-One’
Breaking Bad – ‘Say My Name’
Homeland – ‘New Car Smell’
Mad Men – ‘The Other Woman’ – WINNERComedy Series
30 Rock
Girls
Louie – WINNER
Modern Family
Parks and RecreationComedy (Episodic)
Parks and Recreation – ‘The Debate’
Episodes – ‘Episode 9’
30 Rock – ‘Leap Day’
Modern Family – ‘Little Bo Bleep’
Modern Family – ‘Mistery Date’
Modern Family – ‘Virgin Territory’ – WINNERNew Series
Girls – WINNER
The Mindy Project
Nashville
The Newsroom
Veep
Thank goodness Modern Family won something, that poor show hardly gets any recognition.