The Adapted Screenplay tends to be where the heavy hitters are every year in the writing awards. If you look throughout the history of the Oscars, the Best Picture winner, and a fair share of the nominees as well, tend to come from the Adapted category, not the Original category. I'm not sure why this is. It just may be that coming up with a great original story is so much significantly harder than repurposing one already told for the sake of cinema, but whatever the cause, the Adapted race is usually where it is at in terms of predicting the Best Picture (not that they are necessarily better than the Original Screenplays though). This year's nominees is a fairly good slate, with some big names (including three past winners in the category), as well as a duet of newcomers. All of the scripts are from films I generally liked, although I was a bit disappointed with one of the screenplays. Even though I was not surprised it failed to receive a nomination, it was disappointing that the Academy did not make room for Laeta Kalogridis' adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel "Shutter Island". Lehane has served as one of the leading literary inspirations for filmmakers of the last decade along with J.K Rowling and that lady who writes the Twilight series (sorry, I don't care enough to look up her name, something Meyer I think), as his novels-turned-into-films such as "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone" helped set off the 2000's Boston Cinema Renaissance. Kalogridis' adaptation of "Shutter Island" may be the best adaptation of Lehane's work so for. In particular, the film's closing line, "Which would be worst, to live as a monster or die as a good man?", which was not in the book, puts a whole new interesting spin on the story. In my own personal ballot, I would have also included Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall for their wonderful adaptation of the comic book, "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World", but since I don't have a say, I guess it's all a moot point. This is a good slate of nominees though, so let's get to the ranking.
