As the precursor awards continue unabated until Oscar night, I’m going to be providing a weekly update highlighting the films that have won and lost momentum through the precursor awards (and in some cases other outside influences).

A lot happened this weekend with the Directors Guild, Annie Awards, and Cinematographers selecting their winners for the year.

But, before we get into this week’s winners and losers, let’s take a look at what’s coming up this week:

Week 12

Tuesday, Feb. 7 – Visual Effects Society Awards (Official)
Saturday, Feb. 11 – Art Directors Awards (Official)
Saturday, Feb. 11 – Sci-Tech Awards Awards (Official)
Saturday, Feb. 11 – USC Scripter Awards (Official)
Sunday, Feb. 12 – British Academy Awards (Official)
Sunday, Feb. 12 – Grammy Awards Awards (Official)
Monday, Feb. 13 – Academy Awards Voting Begins Awards (Official)

Big Winners

Lion was never expected to do well with awards. It picked up a prize from DGA for Garth Davis’ directorial debut, but it was its win at the American Society of Cinematographers that stirred things up. The award has long been predicted as a La La Land guarantee. The ASC altered that narrative and made the category into a tougher race.
Damien Chazelle picked up the most important award of the weekend, namely the DGA prize for Best Director. It’s not only one of the best forecasters of the Oscar for Best Director, it also has a pretty damned good track record for predicting Best Picture as well (since those categories used to go hand-in-hand regularly).
Zootopia proved itself to be the frontrunner for Best Animated Feature with its win at the Annie Awards. While there was an outside shot for Kubo and the Two Strings, Zootopia stormed through the prizes including the top one of the night.

Big Losers

La La Land has been getting a lot of negative feedback in recent weeks. Any major frontrunner shows signs of weakness as details of unimpressed audiences and voters tired of its season-long narrative dominance begin to emerge. It then lost the ASC prize for Cinematography to Lion, a film that was never thought of to be its competition. Whether this means that La La Land has weakened or if the sometimes quirky ASC just went with a bigger name for the award.
Kubo and the Two Strings lost the Golden Globe award and desperately needed to win at the Annie Awards to position itself as an upset winner at the Oscars. Unfortunately, those dreams are damned with its failure to win the big Annie prize. It may have won the OFTA award for Animated Feature, but that won’t be of much help or influence. It still has BAFTA next weekend to show it can win. Otherwise, the race is all but over.