The two screenplay awards can be tricky sometimes, but they often line up either with the Best Picture winner and/or with the presumed second place finisher for Picture.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, directed by Tomas Alfredson who burst onto the scene a few years ago helming the creepy instant classic
Let the Right One In, is a very good, smart, lean, effective adaptation of le Carré's novel. The adapting was done by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, both of whom are relatively inexperienced (though Peter is also co-credited on this year's
The Debt), and both are enjoying their very first Oscar nominations.
Tinker Tailor might have done much better, awards-wise, but this screenplay nod, the score, and Oldman were its only Academy Award nominations. They won't win this year, but if they turn out work like this again they'll surely be back.
There's a whole lot going on, both plot and theme wise, in Martin Scorsese's
Hugo. Perhaps too much for it to ever really catch on and become a beloved classic? But the film, and certainly the script, are very ambitious, and it is impressive how well it's all pulled together. The book was very heavily illustrated, so much of the basic visualization was already done for Scorsese and company, but condensing it all into a cinematic story to be told was no small task. John Logan was also nominated for his previous collaboration with Scorsese,
The Aviator, as well as one of the trio of scribes credited with Ridley Scott's
Gladiator. He also wrote the script for one of this year's Best Animated Feature nominees,
Rango, and next up are both Spielberg's
Lincoln and the return of James Bond in
Skyfall. Logan is already one of the busiest screenwriters around, working on some of the biggest projects, but I don't suspect he'll add Oscar winner to his resume this time.
George Clooney's
The Ides of March (he directed, starred in, and co-wrote the script) is adapted from Beau Willimon's play
Farragut North, and follows an extremely capable Deputy Campaign Manager (played by Ryan Gosling) who gets embroiled in an ethical issue on the Presidential primary campaign trail, as well as learning secrets about his candidate (Clooney) that may change the race. It's a very well made film, extremely well acted, very smart in many respects, but I think what kept it from soaring either at the box office or here with a bag full of Oscar nominations is that its conclusion simply isn't anywhere nearly as compelling or interesting as the set-up. This is the second nomination here for both Clooney and his filmmaking partner, Grant Heslov, who previously scored a nod for
Good Night, and Good Luck. Great that they got this spot, but I just plain don't think the finished film is strong enough for them to win.
Moneyball, adapted from Michael Lewis' non-fiction bestseller (Lewis also wrote
The Blind Side, among others) took a while to get to the screen after it was optioned. A book that is best known as a behind-the-scenes look in the front offices of Major League Baseball and how one general manager in particular, the Oakland A's Billy Beane, bucked the traditional way of evaluating players and instead factored in lots of Sabermetrics, which are non-traditional stats that go beyond the standard batting average and ERA, in an effort for his small payroll to compete with the richest teams who were more than tripling his budget.... Just from this brief description, I'm sure you can already begin to see how challenging it was to adapt into a feature narrative film, and not a documentary. But the producers, including star Brad Pitt, stuck with it, and eventually a combination of Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, both previous Oscar nominees and winners (Zaillian for
Schindler's List, Sorkin for
The Social Network), managed to find the emotional throughline and themes that worked in combination with the statistical analysis and business of Baseball stuff. As impressive a feat as that was, I don't know that the Academy at large is going to have quite enough appreciation to give it the Oscar.
Alexander Payne has been nominated as a screenwriter three times now, losing with
Election but winning for
Sideways, both of which he co-scripted with Jim Taylor. For
The Descendants his collaborators were Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, both getting their first credits on a theatrical feature (and fun fact, for fans of the TV series
"Community", Rash plays Dean Pelton). Even with three credited scribes, I think
The Descendats has to be the favorite. Its chances of winning Best Picture or Best Director are looking slimmer all the time, so this is a way to honor a movie that was well loved and very well reviewed, but underperformed a bit in the overall nominations. Plus, this is the one category where
The Descendants isn't competing with
The Artist. Win or lose, Alexander Payne has become a writer/director to be reckoned with.
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