AFTERTHOUGHTS (48)

48.1 WGA 2008 (2)
Just a few minutes before the start of the crucial WGA meeting last Saturday night to discuss the details of the tentative agreement that could put an end to the three-month long strike, this year’s recipients for the WGA awards were announced, and I’d just like to congratulate Joel and Ethan Coen, for winning Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country For Old Men, and Diablo Cody, for winning Best Original Screenplay, for Juno.
You can check out the complete list of winners here.

Now let’s all hope for the best with the on-going WGA ratification of the current on-the-table deal…

48.2 IN OTHER AWARDS NEWS…
… No Country For Old Men was also honoured at this year’s Producers Guild Awards. It’s now received awards from all four major guilds, SAG, DGA, WGA, and PGA.

Meanwhile, over in London, where the BAFTAs were handed out Sunday night (check out Afterthoughts (49) in the Archive), Guillermo Del Toro’s El Laberinto Del Fauno was honoured with this year’s BBC Four World Cinema Award, emerging at the top of a shortlist that included Turkey’s Iklimler (Climates), Germany’s Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), Thailand’s Sang Sattawat (Syndromes and a Century), and the French-Italian co-production, La Science Des Reves (The Science of Sleep).

To all involved in both films, a hearty round of congratulations.

And on a BAFTA sidenote, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen took home the Film Not in the English Language Award last Sunday, as it did the Best Foreign Language Oscar last year.

Parting shot: Reviews of El Laberinto Del Fauno, Juno and No Country For Old Men can be found in the Archive.

(All OS’s and Pan’s Labyrinth UK quad [design by All City] courtesy of impawards.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (2)

2.1 Congratulations to Bong Joon-ho and all involved in the making of Gwoemul (The Host: review in Archive: March 2007), for bagging 4 Asian Film Awards, namely Best Film, Best Actor (Song Kang-ho), Best Cinematographer (Kim Hyung-goo), and Best Visual Effects (to San Fo-based effects house, The Orphanage).

2.2 Likewise, congratulations to Guillermo Del Toro and all involved in the making of El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth: review in Archive: March 2007), for winning in 9 of the dozen categories it was nominated in at this year’s Ariel Awards (Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscars).
The wins were for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Maribel Verdu), Best Cinematography (Guillermo Navarro), Best Art Direction (Eugenio Caballero, Pilar Revuelta, and Ramon Moya), Best Original Score (Javier Navarrete), Best Make Up (David Marti, Jose Quetglas, and Arjen Tuiten), Best Costume Design (Lala Huete and Rocio Redondo), and Best Special Effects (Reyes Abades, Angel Alonso, David Marti, and Montse Ribe).
Interestingly enough, the other major contender this year at the Ariels was 2004’s Cronicas (so I’m not sure how it was nominated in the same year as Laberinto), which has Del Toro and good friend Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) as producers.
Cronicas is a searing look at which is the greater evil: a cruel serial killer, exploitative and sensationalist journalism, or a public with an insatiable hunger for both. It was up for 6 awards and I’ve yet to confirm which categories it won in. (I’ll mention them in a future installment of Afterthoughts.)