WGA 2004 Award Nominations Announced
by Andre Soares
The biggest surprise in the Writers Guild of America Award nominations was the inclusion of Tina Fey’s Mean Girls, which has thus far been ignored by other award-giving groups.
According to the WGA’s press release, "films eligible for a Writers Guild Award were produced signatory to the Writers Guild minimum basic agreement, and released in the year 2004 under the jurisdiction of Writers Guild of America, East and west and affiliate guilds in Australia, Canada, French Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand. There were 193 films eligible for nomination in the categories of Original Screenplay (109) and Adapted Screenplay (84)."
The above paragraph helps to explain why non-English-language films are usually ignored by the Writers Guild. Diarios de motocicleta, although filmed in Spanish, was eligible for the WGA awards because it was produced through distributor Focus Features. (Certain American films made by companies not affiliated with the Guild are also ineligible for the WGA awards. The most notorious example is probably the exclusion of Pulp Fiction from the Guild’s 1994 awards list.)
Although ineligible for the WGA awards, highly regarded non-English-language films such as Mar adentro / The Sea Inside (screenplay by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil), La Mala educación / Bad Education (above, Pedro Almodóvar), and Un long dimanche de fiançailles / A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant) remain likely contenders for the Academy Awards, since the Academy has a different set of eligibility rules.
In 2003, for instance, the foreign-language films Les Invasions barbares / The Barbarian Invasions and Cidade de Deus / City of God were ignored by the Guild, but went on to receive Academy Award nominations.
And so did non-WGA foreign films Y tu mamá también and Hable con ella / Talk to Her in 2002. Hable con ella’s screenwriter-director Pedro Almodóvar even went on to win the best original screenplay Oscar. Also absent from the 2002 WGA list was the English-language but (mostly) European-made The Pianist, winner of the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay.
And in 2001, non-WGA Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain / Amelie was listed as one of the Academy Award nominees for best original screenplay.
Finding Neverland was deemed ineligible for the WGA award because it was made outside of the Guild’s current labor regulations.
Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was also ineligible, but for a different reason: This year, the WGA instituted a new "documentary feature" category, and has banned documentaries from the original screenplay shortlist. Thus, Michael Moore cannot repeat his 2002 feat, when he won the WGA’s best original screenplay award for his documentary Bowling for Columbine. (The award for the documentary category will be given out at a different ceremony.)
Curiously, animated films are not allowed to compete for the WGA awards. The Academy has no such rule. Schrek (2001) and Finding Nemo (2003) are two animated features that received Academy Award nominations in the Writing categories. The same will probably happen this year with The Incredibles.
The 57th Annual Writers Guild Awards will take place on Saturday, February 19, 2005, at The Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles and simultaneously at The Pierre Hotel in New York.
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On wednesdays We were Pink tooo!!!! :O
Lols
Mwa
:)
xxxx
il ezst trou bou le filme de Mean girls
et je la veux toujour et oussi La jeune actrice actrice Lindsay Lohan elle est belle merci