Film awards favorites emerge

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE: The weekend’s two awards shows combined to bring more clarity to certain races while leaving the Best Picture Oscar competition wide-open. After cleaning up at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Saturday, American Hustle appeared to have emerged as the favorite in the nine-film field—until the Gravity and 12 Years a Slave tied for top film honors at the Producers Guild Awards last night. Meanwhile, the train kept a-rollin’ for Blue Jasmine’s Cate Blanchett in the lead actress category and for Dallas Buyers Club’s upstart duo of Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, the latter appearing in his first film since 2009’s Mr. Nobody. As TheWrap put it, Leto’s supporting-actor SAG victory, which followed similar wins at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, simply reinforced that the Dallas Buyers Club actor is as much a lock in his category as Blanchett is in hers. And his co-star Matthew McConaughey, who once seemed to be an underdog to Chiwetel Ejiofor in the best-actor category, has increasingly pulled away and become the guy whose performance just can’t be denied. Here are TheWrap’s complete lists of SAG Awards winners and Producers Guild Awards winners. The Academy Awards will air 3/2 on ABC. (1/20a)