All the guilds have weighed in — and the Oscar nominations are just around the corner
The guilds have all spoken. Now all that’s left is to hear from the motion picture academy.
Welcome to the Gold Standard, the newsletter from the Los Angeles Times that helps guide you through the ins and outs of the awards season leading up to the Oscars.
I’m Glenn Whipp, The Times’ awards columnist and your newsletter host.
Directors and producers guilds weigh in
With the five nominees unveiled on Thursday, the Directors Guild of America Awards offered a slate that countered both the “all-male” set that Natalie Portman savaged from the podium at the Golden Globes last weekend and the racial homogeneity that sparked two years of #Oscarssowhite.
The nominees: Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), Jordan Peele (“Get Out”), Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”), Christopher Nolan (“Dunkirk”) and Martin McDonagh (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”).
Looking ahead to Oscar nominations on Jan. 23, I wouldn’t bet against anyone in this group. And that’s with full knowledge that the DGA and academy slates haven’t matched in eight years.
The Producers Guild apparently had a tie, resulting in their first set of 11 nominees. The volume reaffirms what we already know — that it’s a wide-open Oscar year. Also significant: Two movies directed by women made it in.
Oprah captures the Golden Globes’ mood
The 75th Golden Globes were the first major awards show during Hollywood’s #MeToo movement, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. didn’t miss its cue.
Films and television shows driven by women — “Lady Bird,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Big Little Lies” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” — prevailed at a ceremony marked mostly by serious speeches focusing on months of allegations and admissions of sexual harassment within Hollywood.
Oprah Winfrey’s rousing acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award — a stirring, spiritual call to arms — provided the evening’s powerhouse moment. Was it a kickoff to a 2020 presidential run? Of course not. But it gave people something to talk about for days.
You can read The Times’ complete coverage of the event and its after-parties here.
Deep dive into ‘The Florida Project’
Yes, I’m still holding out hope that enough academy members saw and loved “The Florida Project” to propel Sean Baker’s acclaimed movie to a best picture Oscar nomination.
I spoke with Baker and actors Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince and Bria Vinaite for a story that looks at the movie’s empathetic portrait of humanity and how it was created.
Will “The Florida Project” be nominated? I surveyed the best picture category, paying close attention to the fact that the academy has added 1,457 members — more women, more minorities, more international filmmakers — in the past two years. That kind of shakeup is going to lead to a change in the kinds of movies and performances deemed “Oscar-worthy.” We already saw that with “Moonlight” winning best picture last year.
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