'12 Years a Slave' Wins Big at Satellite Awards; Will the Late Announcement Sway Oscar Race?

The annual Satellite Awards have handed out their film awards.

The big winner of the night was "12 Years a Slave," which went home with the Best Picture of the year. The film also won the Best Director award for Steve McQueen who surprised as many pundits believed it would be Alfonso Cuaron taking the award for his work on "Gravity."

"Gravity," however, was the film to take home the most awards. The film won three technical accolades including Visual Effects, Best Sound and Best Score for Steve Price. However, the film underperformed overall as it was expected the movie would win the Best Editing and Cinematography awards as well.

"American Hustle" was another big winner, beating out "Her" in the Best Original Screenplay competition and also winning the Best Editing award. The movie has already picked up two editing nominations and looks like the front-runner in this competition.

The acting awards went as predicted except in the Best Supporting Actress race. Cate Blanchett kept dominating the Best Actress race for her turn in "Blue Jasmine" while Jared Leto won the Best Supporting Actor award for his transformative work in "Dallas Buyers Club." Matthew McConaughey continued his triumphant awards race as he took home the Best Actor award for "Dallas Buyers Club."

The big surprise race was June Squibb who won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in "Nebraska." The actress who has lost virtually every race beat out front-runners Lupita Nyong'o ("12 Years a Slave") and Jennifer Lawrence ("American Hustle").

In the Foreign Film race the Belgium Oscar nominee "The Broken Circle Breakdown" won the award while "The Wind Rises" won the Best Animated film defeating "Frozen."

"Blackfish" took the Best Documentary award defeating Oscar nominated docs while Lana Del Ray took home the Best Song Award for her "Young and Beautiful" from "The Great Gatsby."

The Steve McQueen film lost the Best Adapted Screenplay to Jeff Pope and Steve Coogan's BAFTA-winning film "Philomena."

Meanwhile, "The Great Gatsby" took home the Best Art Direction award but once again lost the Costume Design Award. The film lost its second Costume award in two days to Michael O'Connor's lavish period dresses for "The Invisible Woman." The loss is important because pundits believed that "The Great Gatsby" was a lock to win the Oscar in this category but having won the CDG and now Satellite award makes its front-runner status look rather dubious. 

The Satellite awards are not always the most dependable precursors because they are voted on by bloggers and journalists and they usually diverge from the Academy Awards. The pundits have always undervalued the awards but they sometimes predict underdog nominees. This year the Satellites were handed out late as the awards are usually announced in December and therefore could have been skewed by the way most precursor awards have gone in the past few months. Previous winners have included "Silver Linings Playbook," "The Descendants," "The Social Network," "The Hurt Locker," "Slumdog Millionaire" and "No Country for Old Men."