finally, a twist!

Last night's Screen Actors Guild Awards finally inserted the slightest bit of drama into the Oscar race! No, it didn't mix up the acting races at all - Firth (sorry, Franco :( ), Portman, Bale, and Leo pretty much solidified their chances of holding the little golden man with wins across the board. No, the aforementioned twist was thrown right in the pathway of The Social Network's march to Best Picture. It had emerged as the undeniable favorite, winning all the major critics' awards as well as the Golden Globe (you've already heard me rant about this). But last night The King's Speech picked up the big award of the evening- Best Ensemble:



While the cast was hoisting the little (green) men, Tom Hooper was taking the top award at the Directors Guild of America, also decided over the weekend. Many considered the trophy to already have the Social Network's David Fincher's name engraved on it. Only 6 times in history has the DGA winner not gone on to win the Oscar for directing.

Do we now have a horserace? Or is The King's Speech suddenly the legitimate favorite to win? Hard to say for sure. Vanity Fair has a good piece about this, and rightfully points out that not only does The King's Speech's win put the might of the Screen Actors Guild behind it (which is pretty important), but the actors' branch is the largest voting block in the Academy. Throw in the recognition in the DGA and that's a pretty powerful argument. Of course, the crazy voting rules for the expanded field of ten nominations (here's our explanation from last year) could throw a wrench in the whole thing.

Frankly, I'm just excited that there could be some level of suspense come Oscar Day!

Staying up to date on the Oscar race...

We love us some Awards Circuit for staying on top of the Oscar race (despite their terrible layout, please, hire a webpage designer) (oh yeah, and you still have Nine getting a best picture nod despite the critical bashing? come on), but this new chart (linked to because of the awesome interactive quality of it) from Entertainment Weekly is a pretty fantastic visual representation of what's happened so far. It will be changing a lot as of tomorrow! Yay Oscar noms!



and, on that note, congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow on her DGA win! This definitely helps put her back in front in the Best Director category (only 6 directors in the last 61 years have not gone on to repeat at the Oscars after winning at the DGAs), thus trying to save us from Cameron speaking Na'vi (well, at least preventing it from happening in two different speeches). She also became the first woman to ever win the award.