I figured the above picture was appropriate, since after this weekend's guild awards (Director's Guild and Actor's Guild), The King's Speech cleaned up... and most likely will at the Academy Awards as well.
Maureen's Reaction:
The Director's Guild Awards (DGAs), always an enormously long event with increasing tension until the last award (which is really the only one that anyone cares about), ended with Tom Hooper winning for The King's Speech. Needless to say, this came as somewhat of a shock, considering The Social Network has been dominating awards up to this point in the year. Tom Hooper's win confirms that the slew of Academy Awards nominations for The King's Speech is not a fluke, and that this film should be taken very seriously this awards season. History has shown that the film that wins the DGA will also win Best Picture (this has only NOT been true in a handful instances in the DGA's 60+-year history). The DGA winner usually also wins Best Director, though it is (weirdly) not quite as good at predicting Best Director as it is with predicting Best Picture. Based on Tom Hooper's win this year, however, it seems very unlikely that anyone else, even David Fincher, will win for Best Director at the Academy Awards, considering The King's Speech recent success.
Going into the Screen Actor's Guild Awards (SAGs) this evening, a couple were certain, and a couple were not. The Best Actor Awards were almost certainly going to go to Colin Firth and Christian Bale, who have won every major awards ceremony this year for their work. The Actress and Ensemble categories were a bit more uncertain... Portman or Bening? Steinfeld or Leo? The Fighter, The King's Speech, or The Social Network? None of the possible winners here would have been shocking, but the winners give further insight/confirmation of future Academy Awards winners. Natalie Portman's and Melissa Leo's wins tonight, both expected and deserved, virtually seal their success at the Academy Awards. Based on other 2011 awards shows (Critic's Choice, Golden Globes), it would seem as though The Social Network should win, or possibly The Fighter for Best Ensemble Cast. The win in Ensemble by Speech was the biggest and best surprise of the evening, well-deserved for a wonderful film.
It seems as though The King's Speech is a clear frontrunner anyway, and Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards typically go hand in hand. At this point, it would be surprising to see anything but Speech win big at the Academy Awards. Personally, I am quite pleased to see Speech receive so much well-deserved recognition, as it is almost certainly the best picture of the year and one of the best, if not the best, directed as well. I truly believe The King's Speech will be a classic of our time and will not be easily forgotten in the coming years.
John's Reaction:
In one of the most shocking awards season turns I can think of it seems that The Social Network's steam has all but run out, and the tortoise of the year, The King's Speech, may end up victorious after all. In rapid succession and without mercy, The King's Speech snatched up the Producer's Guild, Director's Guild, and the Screen Actor's Guild Awards, thus practically guaranteeing its Best Picture and Director win at this year's Academy Awards. Aside from Apollo 13, which won the first ever Screen Actor's Guild 'Best Ensemble' award, no film that has won all 3 guild awards has ever lost the Best Picture Oscar. (And all but one won Best Director, too-Chicago's Rob Marshall lost Best Director to Roman Polanski for the Pianist.) The King's Speech is looking to join the company of Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, The Return of the King, and American Beauty as having a perfect guild sweep.
But what happened to The Social Network? Weren't people comparing it to Citizen Kane as one of the greatest movies in recent times? Surely it can't NOT win the top prize? Unfortunately, chances look slim. While it is true that The Social Network has won a majority of awards this season, most were awarded by critics groups, and while critical reception and accolades are good for a film, there is really no connection to the more popular 'award shows.' This isn't completely unheard of either. In 1997, LA Confidential was very much the critical darling of the year, until a little movie called Titanic sailed away with both Producer's and Director's awards and carried them all the way to the Oscars. Critics are just that: critics, while those who vote for Guild awards are in many cases actual Academy members, and their votes are a much stronger reflection of the final outcome. It seems that while The Social Network was settling into a 'winning' streak, the King's Speech was the volcano slowly building underneath. It seems like it has finally erupted.
Other than that, the majority of the major awards (including the acting awards) seem all sewn up now that the Screen Actor's Awards have come and gone. Any chance we had of seeing an Annette Bening upset has come and gone, and Natalie Portman can now rest easy knowing her Oscar offically has her name imprinted on it.
All we need now are a few of the smaller guilds to announce their winners (editing, cinematography, art direction, and costuming) and we will be all set come prediction time. Until then, we can make a few safe assumptions: Colin Firth will finally get his long-awaited Oscar, Tom Hooper shouldn't necessarily be seen as the underdog anymore, and The Social Network's modem seems to have indefinitely stalled.
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