65th Writers Guild Award Winners

Last night top film honors went to the two films that critics' selected as their two top award winners Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, a fact that seems many have forgotten as American award season comes to an end next Sunday.

With only one more Guild award to go, Costumes Designers where only two Oscar best picture are nominated, we can say that Argo made a near clean-sweep of the Guilds by winning DGA, PGA, SAG, ACE Eddies and now WGA. All these wins clearly suggest that film has become the frontrunner for next Sunday. But please remember that after critics' named their awards, we all thought that the race was going to be between Argo and Zero Dark Thirty and when we saw the actual nominations many started to see the race differently.

Anyway going back to last night ceremony, WGA West presented special honors to Tom Stoppar - Laurel Award for Screen for Lifetime Achievement in Screenwriting, to Tony Kutsher for Lincoln - Paul Selvin Award for written work which embodies constitutional rights and civil liberties, and to Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryûzô Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni – Jean Renoir Award for Screenwriting Achievement, given to international screenwriters who have advanced the literature of motion pictures and made outstanding contributions to the profession of screenwriter.

WGA East presented special honors to: David Koepp – Ian McClellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement in Writing, and Bob Schneider – Richard E. Jablow Award for devoted service to the Guild. The Guild also presented a special tribute to the late Nora Ephron.

Winners are in *BLUE.  To learn winners in television and other categories go official site.

1/14/13
A few minutes ago Writers Guild of America East and West announced their nominations for outstanding achievement in writing for the screen during 2012. Winners will be honored at awards ceremony on Sunday February 17, during simultaneous ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles.

We have to recall that many scripts were disqualified as writers are not WGA members, among those scripts we have Django Unchained, Amour, The Impossible, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Les Miserables, Middle of Nowhere and many more. Please don't forget this issue when trying to guess the possible Oscar nominations.

The following are the nominees.

Original Screenplay
John Gatins for Flight
Rian Johnson for Looper
Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master
Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola for Moonrise Kingdom
*Mark Boal for Zero Dark Thirty

Adapted Screenplay
*Chris Terrio for Argo
David Magee for Life of Pi
Tony Kushner for Lincoln
Stephen Chbosky for The Perks of Being a Wallflower
David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook

Documentary Screenplay
Sarah Burns, Ken Burns and David McMahon for The Central Park Five
Kirby Dick for The Invisible War
Alex Gibney for Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
*Malik Bendejelloul for Searching for Sugar Man
Brian Knappenberger for We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists
Amy Berg and Billy McMillin for West of Memphis

To learn nominations for TV and Radio go here.

Perhaps the category that could look very different in the Oscar nominations is the Original Screenplay as Adapted Screenplay has four films that have had much buzz. Original Screenplay buzz goes to Zero Dark Thirty and Moonrise Kingdom then add Django Unchained and there are still chances that The Master and Amour can get a nod in this category.

By the way there are many predicting that Amour will escape Oscar "foreign-language niche [sic]" to jump into mainstream categories, Original Screenplay is one of them along director, actor/actress and best film.