The January/February issue of Script magazine features their annual appraisal of awards-worthy screenplay contenders. The effort was in print before either WGA or Oscar nominations were announced, so it’s a snapshot of expectations before the writers themselves narrowed the selections down to five.

Script says:

…our mission is to assess each film’s “nominatability,” that mysterious combination of factors that makes one screenplay stand our above the rest. The salient elements tend to be:

• a certain seriousness at the scripts core;
• juicy roles for actors;
• memorable dialogue; and
• a particularly novel or distinctive aspect, whether it be premise or plot twist, that sticks in viewers’ heads as “special.”
• and if the pictures not a money-loser, so much the bette

Covered in the article, but ultimately missing out on nominations in the Adapted Screenplay divisions were The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (”The Film will be appreciated more over time, but this year the field is too crowded.”), Charlie Wilson’s War (”It remains to be seen whether audiences will accept Wilson in the jokey spirit in which it appears to be offered.”), and Lust Caution (”Complex, intelligent tale full of exoticism, verisimilitude and romance…”) Absent from Script magazine’s article entirely is Away From Her.

Last year Script scored 4 out of 5 in their forecast of Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominees, but missed predicting Children of Men. Script nailed The Departed as the screenplay with the best chance of winning, with 3-2 odds. I’ll cover the predictions for Original Screenplay in just a bit, but after the cut you’ll find excepts from this year’s Script analysis for 5 of the adaptations garnering WGA or Oscar recognition.

ATONEMENT

Working In Its Favor: Combines the upstairs/downstairs romance and glamour of Merchant Ivory with the tension of Hitchcock, plus a bravura Dunkirk sequence right out of ‘Saving Private Ryan. In short, the picture has it all, with a twist ending to boot.
Working Against It: Its dramatics are. In the main, low-key. (Think Merchant Ivory again.) Yes, low-key passion worked for The English Patient and Howard’s End, but Out of Africa-style histrionics are more the stuff of Oscar.
The Inside Story: In his stage plays especially, Hampton is a student and exposer of extreme behavior, and there’s plenty in Atonement. But he explains that “what’s attractive about extreme behavior in drama is that we son of want to see the things we’ve never done, or that we’ve thought about, or want to experience. Bad behavior of any kind in a movie or a play is always riveting. At its simplest level, its why we like Goodfellas so much; we’re interested in these people. It’s just one of the primal influences on drama. “What’s interesting in Atonement he continues, “is not the cruelty of the people but the circumstances of the cruelty. Every viewer or reader has to decide to what extent Briony knows in her heart that what she’s doing is unforgivable when she does it. The scene that moves me most in the film and in the book is the scene where Briony tends to the dying French soldier who thinks she’s his girlfriend. It’s a heartbreaking scene because its incredibly cruel, but the people are behaving very admirably. Hes trying not to die, trying to put a good face on it really, and she’s horrified. But when he says, ‘When will we get married?’ she goes along. Incredibly moving.” So’s the movie.

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

Working In Its Favor: The Academy has a soft spot for triumphs of the human spirit, and this one has the curiosity factor to boot: What would it be like to live that way? It’s Harwood’s device—having the camera stand in for Bauby for the first quarter of the picture—that lets us explore that very feeling, and he successfully applied a linear structure to what is actually a set of out-of-sequence essays.
Working Against It: Julian Schnabel’s direction (voted best at Cannes) is quite conspicuous, so much so that Harwood may not get the credit he deserves for the structure.
The Inside Story: Harwood didn’t intend for the film to be done in French (”I’ve got good restaurant French”), yet he found the decision to translate and subtitle his English script “wonderfully fortunate, because it gives a certain texture and authenticity to the story,” and his usual stage play translator, Dominique Hollier, pronounced the translation good. He’s especially proud that each characters reading of the alphabet chart improves in the course of the movie, suggesting how often each had to go through it: “That’s in the screenplay. It just was, to me, the accompanying music; I thought it was quite beautiful.” So’s the film.

INTO THE WILD

Working In Its Favor: Penn is an Academy favorite whatever hat he wears, and many have been touched by the discreet screenwriting style he employs to piece out—often through fractured chronology—the details of Christopher’s life and tragic death.
Working Against It: Penn has been criticized for not ascribing any specific point of view or meaning to the saga. There’s as much evidence that the lad was a spiritual adventurer as a feckless jerk (though similar ambivalence didn’t hurt the Oscar potential of Lawrence of Arabia or Patton). More to the point, the documentary style makes the movie seem barely written, so seamlessly and candidly does the camera follow the young man around.
The Inside Story: The latter point—the improvisatory quality—is what may earn Penn a directing nomination but leave him our of the writing derby.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Working In Its Favor: Pretty much the first film all year—and it opened on November 9—to get everyone truly fired up—critics, public, and Oscar-watchers alike.
Working Against It: “Writing nominees tend to boast snappy dialogue; and while No Country has many good lines, its long, wordless stretches may suggest underwriting. The ending, like the last shot of the final Sopranos episode, strikes many as maddeningly inconclusive, and when people leave disgruntled, they often knock a film off the ballot.
The Inside Story: The Coens are notoriously uninterested in articulating their artistic vision, and a conversation about No Country proves no exception, filled as it is with numerous assurances that choices were made because they seemed “interesting.” The brothers’ most significant departure from the novel was the addition of the rurious dog to the river chase sequence. “We knew Cormac liked dogs from his other books.” Did the author approve of the dog? “Oh, yeah.” Yet the chat is also graced with their equally famous, puckish wit. Asked if whether during the writing process they discuss the rhythms of speech and silence, a deadpan Ethan replies, “No. [pause] No. [pause] No.” They don’t need to say much; their film speaks for itself, and its not garnering a nomination would be a major upset.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Working In Its Favor: The first hour, at least, contains the most sheerly impressive filmmaking of the year. Day-Lewis’ bravura turn as Plainview invests the tart dialogue with a memorably iconic quality that will rebound to the credit of the screenplay. And the mood of the piece seems very much in keeping with a national sense of confusion, mixed with nostalgia for a more unspoiled past.
Working Against It: Anderson loses control of his story following that taut and tense first hour, and the ending is even riskier than that of No Country for Old Men. The Writers Branch tends to have a lowish tolerance for inconclusive endings.
The Inside Story: At a recent Hollywood Q&A, Anderson explained his script’s somewhat tangential relationship to the original novel. “There was lots of the book in there when I started writing, but by the end there was less and less of it. The stuff we came up with was more interesting, and we became more attached to it.” What remained, certainly, was Sinclair’s passion. The progressive novelist, avers Anderson, “was writing about his experiences in Signal Hill where his wife had a plot of land where oil had been discovered. He witnessed all these people trying, to get together, but they were too greedy and desperate. That’s where it started.” Though almost as shy as the Coens when it comes to explicating his concerns, Anderson does say that he stays flexible with them: “You can start out with this or that idea, but sooner or later it all washes away. You end up having an obligation to the characters, following their decisions through. At best, you have happy accidents that ‘tell you what you want to write about.” On the evidence of the movie, what he clearly wanted to write about are the central failures of capitalism, and call it an irony if you must, but Hollywood likes that theme, cf. both Godfathers and Chinatown.

Among these 5, here are Script magazine’s odds for nomination (not necessarily the odds for winning):

No Country for Old Men (even money)

Atonement (even money)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (3-1 odds)

There Will Be Blood (3-1 odds)

Into the Wild (6-1 odds)