Slumdog Millionaire, the little film that could, is building up some serious momentum as awards season rolls inevitably on towards the Oscars. This weekend it landed both the Producers Guild of America award for Producer of the Year and the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Ensemble (Film).
The PGA awards used to be seen as a serious harbinger of Oscar success, but in the last four years the PGA and Academy have agreed on Best Film only once, so Slumdog's producers must be hoping that the two are coming back into step. Wall-E took Best Animated film at the awards, with Man on Wire taking Best Documentary - both are their respective categories at this point. In TV, Mad Men, John Adams and 30 Rock were the big fiction winners.
At the SAG awards last night Slumdog won Best Ensemble Cast, the biggest prize of the night. Again, it's not a wholly reliable Oscar indicator: the same film has only taken this and Best Picture six times in the last 13 years. Still, it's a promising start.
**The Dark Knight **picked up two awards, Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger and Best Stunt Ensemble, while Kate Winslet landed another Best Supporting Actress award for The Reader. Perennial favourites Meryl Streep (for Doubt) and Sean Penn (for Milk) took Best Actress and Actor respectively, something of a surprise given the previous successes of Kate Winslet and Mickey Rourke in those categories.
In the TV categories, John Adams, 30 Rock and Mad Men were again the big winners, with other awards for Brothers & Sisters (Sally Field took Best Actress in a Drama Series), House (Hugh Laurie got Best Actor in a Drama Series) and Heroes (Best Stunt Ensemble).
The Academy Awards are now less than a month away, so get your pundit hat on and start figuring out what it all means below...