Tonight’s SAG Awards should provide the next big log tossed on the roaring fire of Oscar speculation, which seems to be more heated than ever before. I mean everyone has an opnion, and a lot of the more seasoned Oscar bloggers have perfectly good arguments for their predictions, even if no one can seem to agree on anything except Helen Mirren’s win for Best Actress.
I really don’t think the ultimate SAG winners will do anything to lock down any of the categories. For every person that says “Crash won SAG’s Best Ensemble Award and then won the Best Picture Oscar. It stands to reason that whatever wins Ensemble tonight is the frontrunner for the Oscar,” there is another person who can easily counter with “SAG gave the Ensemble award to The Full Monty but the Best Pic Oscar went to Titanic!” (sidenote: hooray for SAG!) Then, you have “SAG supporting actor went to Paul Giamatti last year, but the Oscar went to George Clooney. SAG is useless in predicting Oscars!” Then we hear “not so! SAG and Oscar agreed on the other three acting categories. Thus, a SAG win either guarantees an Oscar or at least a really good chance….”
My point is that nothing --no major sweep of the critics awards, no Golden Globe victory, no SAG triumph –can guarantee the final glory at the Kodak next month. Whatever happens with SAG and then with the upcoming DGA will only heighten the frenzy of this year’s surprisingly impassioned Oscar season.
There is so much stuff out there this year. My favorite commentary of the past few days comes to us courtesy of Nikki Finke at LA WEEKLY. It’s a great read. And very, very funny. Check it out.
I really don’t think the ultimate SAG winners will do anything to lock down any of the categories. For every person that says “Crash won SAG’s Best Ensemble Award and then won the Best Picture Oscar. It stands to reason that whatever wins Ensemble tonight is the frontrunner for the Oscar,” there is another person who can easily counter with “SAG gave the Ensemble award to The Full Monty but the Best Pic Oscar went to Titanic!” (sidenote: hooray for SAG!) Then, you have “SAG supporting actor went to Paul Giamatti last year, but the Oscar went to George Clooney. SAG is useless in predicting Oscars!” Then we hear “not so! SAG and Oscar agreed on the other three acting categories. Thus, a SAG win either guarantees an Oscar or at least a really good chance….”
My point is that nothing --no major sweep of the critics awards, no Golden Globe victory, no SAG triumph –can guarantee the final glory at the Kodak next month. Whatever happens with SAG and then with the upcoming DGA will only heighten the frenzy of this year’s surprisingly impassioned Oscar season.
There is so much stuff out there this year. My favorite commentary of the past few days comes to us courtesy of Nikki Finke at LA WEEKLY. It’s a great read. And very, very funny. Check it out.
OK, so a word about the five Best Actor nominees. They are the same for SAG and the Academy, and four of them represent the only nomination for their respective films. In other words, people like their performances but nothing else in their movies rate a nomination. I’ve been scouring the record books and I can’t find another year when this happened in this category. Sure, there have been years when winning actors had the only nomination for their films…but four out of five nominations in a single category? Hmmmm.
Furthermore, we seem to be looking at a showdown between Forest Whitaker and Peter O’Toole, yet their movies (The Last King of Scotland and Venus, respectively) are bottom feeders at the box office. As much as I’d love to see O’Toole snatch a surprise victory on Oscar night, is it even possible when his movie has made, as of today, less than $400,000 in its limited release? Is it possible that Leo D may win? At least Blood Diamond pulled in a few more nominations and did so-so at the b.o. And of course, there’s that other movie, you know, The Departed, in which he happened to star. I’m just wondering.
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