The stake of this weekend's guild awards

After the PGA and the announcement of the Academy Award nominations, this race has shifted in a big way in The King's Speech's favor after a huge PGA upset and a gargantuan 48 nomination pull at the Oscars. The egregious snub of Andrew Garfield shows a possible weakness in the acting branch's support for The Social Network, which desperately needs this weekend to regain the kind of momentum it needs to pull off a win this year. The three films that seem to have the best shot at winning Best Picture this year are the ones that gained the trifecta of nominations in Director, Screenplay and Editing, as well as some acting nominations. The only films with nominations in each field are The Fighter, The King's Speech and The Social Network. The King's Speech already got the PGA, I get the sense that The Fighter will win the SAG and that The Social Network will win the DGA for the first three-way split in the guilds since 2005. That would be good news for The Social Network since the DGA tends to be the more accurate indicator of who will win Best Picture, like in the aforementioned year when Million Dollar Baby triumphed over both PGA winning The Aviator and SAG Ensemble winner Sideways. If Tom Hooper manages a DGA upset, I'd say it's all but over for any film other than The King's Speech to triumph this year.

SAG is even more up in the air. The King's Speech got the most nominations and even if it loses the DGA but wins the SAG, I would say that it still benefits from the momentum. However, it is the more traditional choice and there has been a recent brouhaha over SAG voting this year when they switched to online balloting which the older members of SAG, to whom The King's Speech probably most appeals to, had no idea of and are waiting for their paper ballots after having thrown away their earlier received instructions on how to vote online. This could also benefit The Social Network which could regain its frontrunner status if it stages a coup this weekend by winning the DGA, the SAG, and getting Mark Zuckerberg to guest star on the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jesse Eisenberg this weekend. I do get the sense that the easier option to vote for, though, will be The Fighter, with its flashier supporting characters that will likely win awards the same night. But don't rule out The King's Speech's supporting players (Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter) in those categories, either. That could also show some telling support for that film.