Less than a week ahead of the 86th Academy Awards, we are officially in the home stretch of what has seemed like an extremely long awards season. This past weekend the industry guilds concluded their festivities of the best of the 2013 cinema with the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) and the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) announcing their picks. Patricia Norris won the CAS award for costume design in a period film for her work in 12 Years a Slave – she is also up for the Academy Award next weekend unlike the other winners the guild announced; Suzy Bezinger won the contemporary film category for Blue Jasmine, while Trish Summerville won for designing The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in the fantasy film category. Catherine Martin’s costumes for The Great Gatsby missed a recognition by the CAS, but may actually be frontrunner for the Academy Awards.The Cinema Audio Society also presented its awards for the best sound mixing achievements of the past year. To no one’s surprise, Gravity nabbed the top prize for best sound mixing in a live action feature and is highly expected to repeat the honor at the Oscars. Captain Phillips, Inside Llewyn Davis, Iron Man 3 and Lone Survivor were also nominated by the CAS; the Oscars opted for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in place of Iron Man 3 but the rest of the line-up matched on both lists. Gravity is far and away the favorite. CAS also handed Frozen the award for best sound mixing in an animated feature.
With these two final guild announcements, certain things seems clear while others may still be up in the air less than a week away from the big show. Parsing through all the guilds, Gravity is the clear leader of the group, winning seven major guild awards. Alfonso Cuarón’s space odyssey won awards from the Directors Guild, Art Directors Guild, Motion Picture Sound Editors Guild, Cinema Audio Society, Visual Effects Guild and from the Producers Guild. The latter of which the film tied, historically, with Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, which has received honors from the Costume Designer Guild and the Make-up and Hairstyling Guild as well.
David O. Russell’s American Hustle and Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips also both won three guild awards with Hustle winning the Screen Actors Guild top prize, a mention from the Make-up and Hairstyling Guild and an American Cinema Editors “ACE Eddie” award for film editing of a musical or comedy. Phillips won the “ACE Eddie” drama prize, a mention from the Motion Picture Sound Editors and the Writers Guild award for Adapted Screenplay; the Writers Guild choose Her as their pick for Original Screenplay; Spike Jonze’s futuristic romance also won a prize from the Art Directors Guild. Anyone confused yet?
The Academy Awards will be handed out on March 2nd.
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