Toy Story 3, The King’s Speech & More Ineligible For WGA Screenplay Awards

Dec 29, 2010 by Ross Miller 

Top movie awards contenders like ‘Toy Story 3' and ‘The King’s Speech’ have been deemed ineligible for the Best Screenplay categories at The Writers Guild of America awards.

When awards season rolls around every year there always seems to be a group of films that are tapped to pick up their share of the major awards. 2010 is no exception and this year the likes of Toy Story 3, Inception, The King’s Speech, The Social Network, Black Swan and The Fighter are among those which have won awards already and look likely to pick up some Oscars as well.

However, when it comes to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA), there are rules which often prohibit certain awards favorites from winning in some of the big categories offered by awards ceremonies.

Following the Oscars deeming the scores for Black Swan, True Grit and The Fighter ineligible for the Best Original Score category, the WGA has deemed some of the biggest awards favorites ineligible for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay at its annual awards ceremony.

Variety reports that under tough restrictions – requiring that scripts be “produced under WGA jurisdiction and be formally submitted for consideration” – favorites such as Toy Story 3, The King’s Speech and Another Year are now ineligible for the two Best Screenplay categories. Head over to Variety for a breakdown of why these films have been shunned.

Toy Story 3 may do well at the Oscars but it will have to do without a WGA award for its screenplay

Despite the fact that members of the WGA make up a segment of the Academy voters this exclusion doesn’t mean that those films snubbed won’t get nominated for the Screenplay awards at the Oscars. However, an interesting thing to note is that for 11 of the last 16 years, the winners of the WGA awards in the Screenplay categories have matched up with the Oscars. I guess that means this year it will be harder to guess what will win on the big night!

Despite many of the awards favorites being labelled ineligible by the WGA, there are still plenty of big ones left, including Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception and The Social Network. Here’s a complete list of what’s eligible and ineligible:

INELIGIBLE – ORIGINAL AND ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Another YearBiutifulBlue ValentineThe Ghost WriterThe King’s SpeechMade in DagenhamScott Pilgrim vs. the WorldToy Story 3Winter’s Bone

ELIGIBLE – ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (TOTAL: 43)

All Good ThingsBlack SwanBrooklyn’s FinestBurlesqueCasino JackCity IslandThe Company MenConvictionCountry StrongCyrusDue DateEasy AThe FighterFrankie and AliceFrozenFurry VengeanceGet LowGreenbergGrown UpsHereafterHoly RollersHow Do You KnowInceptionJust WrightThe Kids Are All RightLetters to JulietLife as We Know ItMiddle MenMorning GloryMother and ChildThe Other GuysOur Family WeddingPlease GiveRemember MeSaltSecretariatSolitary ManSomewhereSpliceStoneWelcome to the RileysWonderful WorldYou Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

ELIGIBLE – ADAPTED SCREENPLAY (TOTAL: 33)

127 HoursAlice in WonderlandThe American Barney’s VersionBarry MundayThe CraziesEat Pray LoveThe Extra ManFair GameFor Colored GirlsHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1I Love You Phillip MorrisIt’s Kind of a Funny StoryJack Goes BoatingThe Karate KidThe Last SongLegend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’HooleLet Me InLike Dandelion DustThe Next Three DaysPercy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning ThiefPrince of Persia: The Sands of TimeRabbit HoleRedShutter IslandThe Social NetworkThe Sorcerer’s ApprenticeThe TempestToday’s SpecialThe TownTron: LegacyTrue GritThe Twilight Saga: Eclipse

It’s rather… unfortunate that films like Eclipse, Alice in Wonderland, Grown Ups and Furry Vengeance are eligible and others like Toy Story 3, The King’s Speech and Winter’s Bone have been given the cold shoulder. But in the end rules are rules and they can’t be broken just so that the awards favorites can get nominated.

I’ll leave it up to you to give your picks for what you think should nominated and ultimately win.

The WGA award winners will be announced on February 5th, 2011.

Source: Variety

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Tim Burton is co-writing a new story with his Twitter followers

November 24 2010 by admin in News |

Tim Burton is asking the Twitterverse to collaborate on a new story featuring his beloved character Stainboy.

His first tweet:

“Stainboy, using his obvious expertise, was called in to investigate mysterious glowing goo on the gallery floor #BurtonStory.”

Twittering Burton fans can post their own follow-up narrative, according to the last selected Tweet, by including the hash-tag #BurtonStory.

There are two rules to Burton’s version of the age-old game, exquisite corpse: Tweet as often as you like and keep it clean. The final short story will be published on December 6th.

Here’s how the story reads so far:

Burton’s entry: Stainboy, using his obvious expertise, was called in to investigate mysterious glowing goo on the gallery floor #BurtonStory

2 He felt his heart pounding hard against his ribs. As he bent down, he saw his own reflection on the surface of the puddle. #BurtonStory
3 Withholding his breath, he lightly poked the surface of the puddle. The surface shifted strangely, slowly spinning into action. #BurtonStory
4 Stainboy took a step back as the goo continued to spin faster and faster. A sharp cold wind whipped round the room. #BurtonStory
5 The chandelier swung, the art on the walls shook against the walls, and the goo began to take form. #BurtonStory
6 Slowly beginning to encircle Stainboy, the gelatinous mountain of goo looked almost familiar. #BurtonStory
7 Stainboy’s eyes narrowed as he tentatively lifted his hand towards the goo, allowing it to hover inches from the surface. #BurtonStory
8 Suddenly the goo sprang up, covering his hand. Stainboy tried to pull away but the harder he fought, the stronger it got. #BurtonStory
9 The goo pulled him closer and closer. He suddenly realized why the goo looked strangely familiar. #BurtonStory
10 But how did the goo end up on the gallery floor? And more importantly, why? #BurtonStory
11 It clung tightly to him, he could feel the chill of the gelatinous goo creep up his arm, true to his nature he did not panic. #BurtonStory
12 A plan was what he needed. Stainboy had always been the curious type, but right now, he had no desire to wait and see. #BurtonStory
13 As the goo continued to engulf his body, Stainboy noticed the chandelier, now swinging furiously. Could he reach it? #BurtonStory
14 Stainboy reached up as high as his arm would allow, the goo keeping him just inches out of reach of the chandelier #BurtonStory

I tried several times to add my two cents but Twitter wouldn’t connect, so I’ll just give you readers a taste of my poetic skill.

Suddenly the goo spoke! She whispered softly, stop Stainboy, give me a chance, it’s me, I just want to dance #BurtonStory

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The story behind Storify, new real-time curation service

You’re seeing more and more Storify links around the web. The Washington Post has used it. So have many other journalists and curators.

Why do we need Storify? Because more and more of our lives and the news events we care about are being covered on Twitter, Facebook, or other new media services.

In fact, on Friday when the founders came to my house to film this video my producer, Rocky Barbanica, called me and said he couldn’t get to my house because of an accident. I went to Yahoo News. Nothing. I went to Google News. Nothing. I did a search on Google, hoping maybe some real-time info showed up there. Nothing. But then I went to Twitter Search, typed “Devil’s Slide” and five tweets popped up saying that both lanes of highway one were closed, due to an injury accident. More and more we’re finding the best and latest info about news is on social networks and, especially, Twitter.

So, if I worked for the local newspaper and wanted to put a bundle of those tweets up on our front page, how would I do it? There are a variety of new curation services and, even, URL shortener Bit.ly has added bundling capabilities in the past week. The others that I’m trying are Curated.by (I’ll have more coverage of them soon, because they are working on a major update), KeepStream, and Bag the Web. I covered the others here.

Here I interview the co-founders of Storify because I’m seeing more of their links being used than the others and wanted to, well, get the inside story. Enjoy!

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