‘The Hurt Locker’ & ‘Up In The Air’ Top The WGA Awards

Are you buying the surging meme? Are you one of those believing the Harvey Weinstein self-made hype — bought hook line and sinker by the media — that “Inglourious Basterds” is going to win Best Picture, because Weinstein believes that if you repeat the sentiment often enough people will listen? And hell, he’s right, people are listening. Or at least the media has in the last few weeks because, well, lemmings will do that some times.

So, back to “Inglourious Basterds.” Everywhere you look there’s another interview with Harvey Weinstein, who’s done a wonderfully good con job of convincing the media that Tarantino’s film is going to win Best Picture, but we just don’t buy it and never did (not that we have anything against it, we’d rather it won than say, “Avatar”). Now if ‘Inglourious’ would have actually competed for the WGA award, we’d probably have a better chance at figuring out its overall chances, but of course the screenplay was ineligible because Tarantino is not part of the guild (and ‘Basterds’ is up for a Best Original screenplay nomination).

So with Tarantino out of the picture, the road was quite clear for Mark Boal’s “The Hurt Locker” script to win Best Original Screenplay and it did just that, but the competition wasn’t exactly fierce either (James Cameron’s “Avatar” screenplay and while “500 Days Of Summer” is a good script, after receiving an Oscar snub, it probably wasn’t a surprise it didn’t win).

In a win that was no shock to anyone, Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner’s “Up In The Air” won the Best Adapted Screenplay award (maybe this means Walter Kirn, the author of the novel they adapted, will finally receive his Oscar invitation). Reitman and Turner will almost assuredly be holding the Academy prize on Oscar night and since the “controversy” is now over, we don’t really have to worry about drama on that front. Another non-shocker was the Best Documentary Screenplay award going to Louie Psihoyos’ “The Cove” which has deservedly been the front runner all year. There’s no stopping this picture come Oscar time either.

So back to no Tarantino in these awards, this is one of those rare instances where the Guild awards don’t help anyone precisely predict the Oscar. But, regardless of ‘Basterds’ being eligible or not, “The Hurt Locker” not only won the WGA award, it also won the ACE Eddie award which is the Guild Award for Best Editing. Everyone knows 9 out of 10 times, whatever wins the Best Editing award at the Academy Awards, wins Best Picture.

Now, what wins a Guild prize obviously doesn’t guarantee a Oscar prize, but we’ve believed it for a while now frankly. “The Hurt Locker” is very likely to win Best Picture (and obviously Kathryn Bigelow is taking Best Director). And while yes, the new populist voting system could hand it to “Avatar,” could throw a wrench in things, weirdly enough, we think the Academy will do the right thing this year and hand the Best Picture to “The Hurt Locker,” which will be highly ironic if it happens.

The Academy desperately wanting to popularize their Oscar ceremony and drive viewership by foolishly making it a 10 Picture race, and then the film with the lowest box-office grosses of all 1o nominees wins? Hell, that would be glorious mud in their eye from our perspective and just one more reason we hope “The Hurt Locker” wins the top prize. IndieWire was one of the first sites to announce the winners.