newsmakers

newsmakers

‘Paris,’ ‘Descendants’ win WGA honors

LOS ANGELES

Woody Allen’s romantic fantasy “Midnight in Paris” and Alexander Payne’s family drama “The Descendants” have won top screenplay honors from the Writers Guild of America.

With his biggest hit in decades, writer-director Allen earned the guild’s prize Sunday for original screenplay on “Midnight in Paris.” The film stars Owen Wilson as a modern Hollywood writer who gets a chance to hang with his literary idols in the 1920s Paris of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

Director Payne shared the adapted-screenplay honor with co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. Based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, “The Descendants” stars George Clooney as a Hawaiian dad struggling to tend to his two daughters after a boating accident puts his wife in a coma.

The wins boost the prospects for both films to earn the same prizes at Sunday’s Academy Awards, where both movies also are in the running for best picture.

But not all key Academy Awards contenders were eligible for the Writers Guild honors, including Oscar best-picture front-runner “The Artist.” The black-and-white silent film is competing against “Midnight in Paris” for original screenplay, but “The Artist” was ineligible at the Writers Guild awards because it was not made under the union’s contract guidelines.

Olympia theft worse than first reported

ATHENS, Greece

Police in Greece say 77 artifacts were stolen by armed robbers last week at a small museum in Ancient Olympia — the birthplace of the ancient games — revealing that the extent of the theft was worse than reported originally.

Police and the Culture Ministry initially had estimated that some 65 objects up to 3,200 years old were taken in Friday’s raid, when two masked gunmen tied up a museum guard and used a sledgehammer to smash display cabinets at the southern Greek museum.

Most of the items on the list released Monday were bronze and pottery figurines, vases and lamps.

The robbery was the second major art theft in two months after works by 20th-century masters Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian were snatched from Athens’ National Gallery.

Vindicator wire services