SAG nominations

[Big Magilla]

As someone said in the comment section in Variety, this is a bunch of twaddle that sounds like something Stewart's P.R. team approved for publication.

As another one wrote, Stewart is not held such high esteem by her fellow actors.

I don't know where all this acclaim for her comes from. I know, that aside from The Clouds of Sils Maria, I've never seen her in anything in which I thought she was remotely good. Spencer is not a good movie. She is not good in it. Beyond that, people have grown sick of seeing stuff about Diana. The current Broadway musical has been a source of derision from the get-go. The Crown Seasons 3 and 4 were excellent and should have been the last word on "the people's princess" for a while.

[Sabin]

Owen Gleiberman just wrote on article on why SAG snubbing Kristen Stewart was a good thing. I... don't think he's entirely wrong. I think he's wrong about her performance. I don't ultimately care for it and ultimately I think the fact that it's a very divisive performance is going to be the reason why she fails to get a nomination (if that occurs). But he's right that this snub attention she's getting could possibly serve as a slight motivator where one did not previously exist.


Why SAG’s Best Actress Snub May Have Done Kristen Stewart a Favor (Column)

https://variety.com/2022/film/columns/s ... 235155099/


In awards season, the word “snub” gets overused in a major way. A snub, in life, is a deliberate dis. The essence of it is that it’s personal. When an actor fails to make the cut of nominees for a movie award, to call that a snub is to make it sound like a conspiracy — an omission with a hint of design, rather than what it is, which is an accident or, really, a preference. It’s an insult to those who did get nominated, as if they were mere placeholders for the hallowed star who got “snubbed.”

But Kristen Stewart’s omission from the list of nominees for outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading role in the Screen Actors Guild awards, announced on Jan. 12, did feel like a snub. I’m not just saying that because Stewart (to put my bias out there) happens to be my own choice for best actress in a movie this year. She’d been anointed as a contender for the Academy Awards from the moment “Spencer” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, and in the time since she has often been referred to as the front-runner. Even as “Spencer” provoked divided feelings on the part of many critics and viewers (though some of us love it), there were few who questioned the veracity, or radiance, of Stewart’s performance.

That doesn’t mean SAG owed her a nomination. But her absence from the SAG roster was greeted, I would say accurately, as the most startling omission from that group’s slate in a long time, maybe even decades.

That “Spencer” itself isn’t more widely beloved probably had something to do with it. Yet for anyone with an eye on Stewart’s career, it certainly did seem as if this was “her time” — the moment for the awards-industrial complex to acknowledge her emergence as an actor of singular personality and power. On a gut level, the SAG nominations created the feeling that she was being knocked off her pedestal.

Of course, one reason for that feeling is that people have been trying to knock Kristen Stewart off her pedestal for nearly 15 years. She’s the kind of star people become obsessed with, yet the obsession is double-edged. From the moment she was lofted into the “Twilight” stratosphere, the fan chatter about her tended to include a lot of serious carping. We all know the gripes: She’s the same in every role! (She’s not, but I once wrote a column asking, What if she is? So were Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne.) In public appearances, especially in the early days, she spoke haltingly and chewed her lip with an I’m-not-sure-I-want-to-be-here ambivalence that many took to be a sign of snobbish superiority. (In truth, her ambivalence about stardom — the fact that she pursued it but also felt uncomfortable in the media fishbowl — is one of the most fascinating things about her.) And then there was the drama of KPatz, where she became, for a moment, a teen-idol soap-opera villainess.

All that now feels like gossip under the bridge. Yet even as Stewart, after the “Twilight” series ended, pursued a notable series of acting choices, ditching the spangled showcase of Hollywood blockbusters to make films like “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Certain Women” and “Personal Shopper,” an attitude about her persisted: that she was somehow a performer who radiated “entitlement.” You almost never hear that complaint lodged against male stars; it’s always hurled at people like Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow. But in the case of Stewart, the carping began when she was so young that it’s been hard for her to shake.

As good as Stewart is in 2008’s “Twilight,” the film that made me a Kristen Stewart believer was the next year’s “Adventureland,” Greg Mottola’s great ’80s nostalgia film — if you’ve never seen it, you must — because it revealed the spark beneath the already gathering storm of her pensively moody mystique. Stewart was just 17 when both those films were shot, but already the star she reminded me of wasn’t another youth phenom. It was Jane Fonda, who in her heyday had a cutting, charismatic reticence I find spiritually akin to Stewart’s. Like Fonda in the late ’60s, Stewart has declared a certain independence from the Hollywood game. You see it in her choice of roles. You see it in the casual courage she has shown in being upfront about her sexual identity. And you see it in the quote she tossed off to W Magazine about the Oscars (“I don’t give a shit”), which some viewed as an act of political self-sabotage.

I saw it differently. I don’t think you get to be an actor in Kristen Stewart’s position without caring, on some level, whether or not you win an Oscar. What Stewart was really saying is that in a movie industry built around an annual media-enforced Oscar obsession, she wasn’t going to pretend this stuff matters all that much. That’s why she risked torpedoing her own chances. In my eyes, it was a healthy thing to do.

Stewart deserved the rave reviews she got for “Spencer,” but in a funny way the Stewart Image Problem may have been compounded by the fact that she was playing Princess Diana — who, viewed from a certain angle, could be seen as the first Kardashian, the ne plus ultra of an overprivileged media princess. The SAG snub made it feel, on some primal level, like Stewart was being punished for being a princess playing a princess.

But that’s why I think her failure to snag a SAG nomination may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Many believe that she’s been knocked off the track to an Oscar nomination — that the five nominees for best actress, when they’re announced on Feb. 8, will mirror the five SAG nominees. And maybe they will. SAG is the hugest Oscar voting bloc, so if Stewart couldn’t get acknowledged there then she’s likely facing an uphill battle.

Here, however, is another possible scenario. The laundry list of Kristen Stewart’s alleged sins of entitlement (moodiness! lip chewing!) is rather long. And this year you can add one more to the list: being anointed as the front-runner for best actress. That’s always something that can come back to bite you.

But in getting snubbed by SAG, Stewart is now the underdog. And in her case, that underdog status might be the very balm she needs. It could lend the best actress race an entirely new momentum. If Stewart had gotten the SAG nomination, she might now be on the fast track to losing the Oscar to a more established performer, or to the intensely buzzed-about, should-have-won-it-last-time Lady Gaga. But that narrative has now been shaken up. Suddenly, Stewart is no longer the “entitled actress princess.” She’s now the one who didn’t get invited to the ball. And that could help tone down the chip-on-the-shoulder resistance to her that has been out there for too long.

None of this would be worth talking about if Stewart gave a performance in “Spencer” that was anything less than extraordinary. But it’s her stunning skill and devotion that makes the movie a journey, that gives it a core of empathy and mystery. Just contrast her performance with that of Emma Corrin in Season 4 of “The Crown” (which ends where “Spencer” begins, with a Christmas weekend at Sandringham). In that fantastic series, Corrin shows us Diana’s innocence, her ebullience, her despair, as well as her media learning curve. Yet it’s part of the design of the series that she never quite steps out of being the ingenue. (Presumably Elizabeth Debicki, in Season 5, will do that.) “Spencer,” by contrast, plumbs Diana’s hidden depths, her emotional architecture, in a way that’s less chatty but more haunting than “The Crown.” Stewart takes us through the ring of fire, through despair and out the other side, and into everything Diana had to do to cover that up. It’s acting as alchemy; Stewart transforms herself and, in doing so, transforms the viewer. If the Oscars pass her by, life will go on, Kristen Stewart will go on and some may talk about how she was robbed. What no one can steal is her purity of talent.

[FilmFan720]

Kate Winslet is also in double digits with 11 film nods.

Interestingly, John C. Reilly has a record with 5 cast nods and no individual nods!

[Big Magilla]

Here's a bit of useless trivia.

Cate Blanchett now has the most SAG cast nominations - 7. Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep advance to 6 each, joining Russell Crow and Brad Pitt. Judi Dench advances to 5, joining Chris Cooper, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Allison Janney, John C. Reilly, and Tom Wilkinson.

Streep has the most overall nominations in film - 17 including 10 in lead and 2 in support. Blanchett has 16 including 4 in lead and 5 in support. Dench has 14 including 6 in lead and 3 in support. DiCaprio has 12 including 5 in lead and 1 in support. Kidman has 10 including 3 in lead, 3 in support, and 4 in cast. Previously nominated Russell Crowe and Julianne Moore also have 10 film nominations overall.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
However...I think you can make a case that Nomadland was by its very nature an impossible candidate for SAG Cast, given it featured only 1 (1 1/2 counting Strathairn's smallish role) professional actors; it had as little chance as Roma of competing. And Green Book was clearly a two-hander (2 1/2 if you squeeze Cardellini in), something of which SAG has also steered clear. The Shape of Water remains the only genuine anomaly.

I'll also add (as you've said a few times on this board) that Nomadland can easily be chalked up to a COVID-era fluke. I'm not sure Nomadland would have happened in a normal time. Whatever that means anymore.

The Shape of Water's omissions remain confusing to me. I can rationalize The Shape of Water by saying that in the height of Trump's early Presidency this voting block wanted to honor more zeitgeist-y projects like The Big Sick or Mudbound. Green Book though might be a two-hander but it doesn't quite feel like one in the same way that La La Land was. It's a much less insular film. They meet people along the way. It also has strong actor appeal. I don't understand how a voter that might reject Green Book as not having enough actors in it would then check off A Star is Born as if Andrew Dice Clay as Lady Gaga's father and Dave Chappelle as Bradley Cooper's random friend really needed honoring. A rule of thumb I have is whether or not a film feels like an actor's film, like is it the kind of film they can call their agent and ask them to find them something like that to star in. No phones were ringing in the agencies with actors barking "Find me the next Roma!"

Anyway, I think this group has as much overlap with the Academy as anything else we pay attention to. They don't always make our self-appointed jobs easy but I think that's a good thing.

[Big Magilla]

There've been 26 SAG Cast awards given out, and all winners but The Birdcage way back in 1996 have been Oscar best picture nominees. Half of them during years where there were only 5 best picture nominees.

True - stats are stats.

On the obverse, 12 of those chosen 26 have been Oscar best picture winners -- including several (Return of the King, Slumdog Millionaire, Argo) I doubt would have been considered triumphant acting ensembles of their years without their best picture heat.

Agreed - which portends well for all five of this year's cast nominees being nominated for Best Picture which they probably wlll be but there are still five other Oscar slots. Not getting a SAG nod for Best Cast may be a blow but it's not necessarily a fatal one.

And, for 21 straight years (1996-2016), not getting a SAG Cast nomination was fatal to a film's best picture hopes...including a couple of films many came into Oscar night thinking were going to obliterate that stat (The Revenant and La La Land).

True - but I hated both of those films for different reasons and did not think either would win.

Now, as noted, in 3 of the past 4 years, we have seen that stat negated. It's possible that the merger with AFTRA has changed the terrain...or simply that the law of averages caught up with this, that it was always a small-sample-size correlation and not an iron-clad stat. But it does bespeak a change.

I think it's more of a change in the way AMPAS thinks but it could be a combination of both.

However...I think you can make a prima facie case that Nomadland was by its very nature an impossible candidate for SAG Cast, given it featured only 1 (1 1/2 counting Strathairn's smallish role) professional actors; it had as little chance as Roma of competing. And Green Book was clearly a two-hander (2 1/2 if you squeeze Cardellini in), something of which SAG has also steered clear. The Shape of Water remains the only genuine anomaly.

OK

Bringing me to West Side Story. This movie is a putatively populist candidate with a large, attention-grabbing cast (five of whom made this morning's BAFTA long-list). This is a movie that SHOULD have made the cut...certainly over movies like House of Gucci or King Richard...if it were the coming juggernaut people have been assuming.

It remains to be seen what the final outcome of West Side Story and The Power of the Dog are in the Oscar race because if your theory is correct, Belfast would seem to be the runaway frontrunner and I'm not sure that's the case. I think the BAFTA short list will be more of an indicator of West Side Story's ultimate chances. If most of those slots on the long list go away, it will definitely be in trouble.

By the way, this is a rare case where neither Golden Globe-winning films made the SAG Cast slate -- 2009 (Avatar/The Hangover), 2015 (The Revenant/The Martian) and last year (Nomadland/Borat) are the only other times in these (now) 27 years.

Yes, and in only one of those 3 years did the SAG winner for Best Cast go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Stats are interesting but I think trends over the long haul from NBR through the major critics, the Globes, SAG and BAFTA combined give us a better picture. When they all go in different directions, anything can happen, which makes it much more exciting.

[Mister Tee]

I don't know why people keep equating the SAG cast award with Oscar's Best Picture award. They're not the same thing.

But it's disingenuous to deny the historic links between the two.

There've been 26 SAG Cast awards given out, and all winners but The Birdcage way back in 1996 have been Oscar best picture nominees. Half of them during years where there were only 5 best picture nominees.

On the obverse, 12 of those chosen 26 have been Oscar best picture winners -- including several (Return of the King, Slumdog Millionaire, Argo) I doubt would have been considered triumphant acting ensembles of their years without their best picture heat.

And, for 21 straight years (1996-2016), not getting a SAG Cast nomination was fatal to a film's best picture hopes...including a couple of films many came into Oscar night thinking were going to obliterate that stat (The Revenant and La La Land).

Now, as noted, in 3 of the past 4 years, we have seen that stat negated. It's possible that the merger with AFTRA has changed the terrain...or simply that the law of averages caught up with this, that it was always a small-sample-size correlation and not an iron-clad stat. But it does bespeak a change.

However...I think you can make a case that Nomadland was by its very nature an impossible candidate for SAG Cast, given it featured only 1 (1 1/2 counting Strathairn's smallish role) professional actors; it had as little chance as Roma of competing. And Green Book was clearly a two-hander (2 1/2 if you squeeze Cardellini in), something of which SAG has also steered clear. The Shape of Water remains the only genuine anomaly.

Bringing me to West Side Story. This movie is a putatively populist candidate with a large, attention-grabbing cast (five of whom made this morning's BAFTA long-list). This is a movie that SHOULD have made the cut...certainly over movies like House of Gucci or King Richard...if it were the coming juggernaut people have been assuming.

By the way, this is a rare case where neither Golden Globe-winning films made the SAG Cast slate -- 2009 (Avatar/The Hangover), 2015 (The Revenant/The Martian) and last year (Nomadland/Borat) are the only other times in these (now) 27 years.

[HarryGoldfarb]

The Power of the Dog managed to secure three individual nominations but failed to make it in Cast.

It has happened before. Green Book, The Shape of Water and Nomadland were all not nominated for SAG Ensemble so I don't think it's that big of a deficit.

Just for the record, I was not addressing the impact this lack of a best cast nomination could have on TPOTD's chances at the Oscar. I was only pointing out the rarity of having three individual nominees and not a nominated cast, although as many have already indicated, it has happened before.

It's weird that Nicole suddenly becomes some kind of a favorite; I ended up watching Being the Ricardos recently, and while Kidman's talent is undeniable, it's impossible not to see Kidman in every single frame, with distracting makeup and rare wigs that just add very little to the failed attempt to bring her closer in looks to Ball. You don't always need the actor to resemble the character, but in this case I’ve found the casting way too distracting.

[rolotomasi99]

If this is the type of year where seven SAG nominees miss at the Oscars, which are the mostly likely losers?

Here are my picks, with 1 being the most vulnerable:
1) Bradley Cooper
2) Jared Leto
3) Cate Blanchett
4) Lady Gaga
5) Javier Bardem
6) Jennifer Hudson
7) Ben Affleck

There has never been a year where every single SAG nominee has also been included at the Oscars.

Here are my picks for those who could be rescued by the Academy, with 1 being the most assured:
1) Kristen Stewart
2) Aunjanue Ellis
3) Penelope Cruz
4) Cirian Hinds
5) Andrew Garfield (supporting)
6) Leonardo Dicaprio
7) Jamie Dornan

[Big Magilla]

I don't know why people keep equating the SAG cast award with Oscar's Best Picture award. They're not the same thing.

The lack of a cast nomination for West Side Story does seem odd because so many of the performances have been so highly praised, but the late arrival of the screener being delivered to the nominators does pose a problem. It didn't hurt Ariana DeBose, but that's the anomaly. It could be that those who did see the film in theatres voted for her in higher numbers than a lot of others in the crowded supporting actress race.

It's odd, but with Belfast, it could be that some thought it unnecessary to vote for Dornan and Hinds who would be part of the cast win and vice versa for The Power of the Dog for which Cumberbatch, Smit-McPhee and Dunst could well be the front-runners.

I, for one, am happy not to see Stewart on the list for Best Actress. I will be over the moon when BAFTA and Oscar ignore her as well.

I haven't seen Gaga's performance, but Chastain, Colman, Hudson, and Kidman were all better than their films. Colman, who has won two SAG cast awards (both for The Crown), has never won one for an individual performance which might give her an edge here.

[rolotomasi99]

I haven't seen Nightmare Alley yet (shooting for tomorrow), but I keep hearing Blanchett dominates her portion of the film, so maybe she's not so out of it as we think.

Blanchett was a pleasure to watch in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. All the actors did a good job, but she was the only one whose performance matched the tone of the film Del Toro was going for. I wish the movie had centered around her rather than Cooper. I have no problem with her being nominated, but I still hope Anne Dowd can be included as well.

[Mister Tee]

Does a single committee cover all four individual acting categories and the two ensemble categories, or do all six film categories each have their own committee?

I can tell you, at least the year my wife had the duty, all categories were handled by the same nominating committee. (That was prior to the Stunt Ensemble category, so that may be done differently.)

But it sure FEELS like these categories have nothing to do with one another. Belfast gets Cast and Balfe (who's been crapping out at those regional critics' groups), but Ciaran Hinds is left off? King Richard nails Cast, but the seemingly invulnerable Ellis misses? Being the Ricardos gets the very iffy Bardem in, but fails at Cast (possibly its most justifiable category)?

And those are just the interior contradictions. In terms of how these gibe with what's been considered the overall race, Kristen Stewart missing is a five-alarmer. Power of the Dog not making Cast is, as is being properly said here, not a kiss of death (after all those years when a SAG Cast nomination was de rigueur, 3 of the last 4 years have shown otherwise), but it certainly isn't good news for a movie that's trying to win with an arty profile. (Its closest precedent, No Country for Old Men, WON this award.) As for West Side Story...I knew people would throw out the "screeners came late" argument, but we said the same about Selma back in the day, and its vulnerability turned out to be quite real. If West Side Story truly had best picture potential, it should have made it under best cast; period.

I realized today that I've never watched the SAGs (nominations or presentations) with any pleasure; I've only ever watched them with dread, that they'd box out movies I liked from Oscar consideration (and honor things I didn't, but more the first). I think these are so far afield -- even, say, from the BAFTA long-list that came out overnight (which had Licorice Pizza, all but ignored here, in virtually every category, down to Cooper Hoffman/cinematography/production design), but also the Globes/Broadcasters lists that preceded -- that I have a sense this was a wild-hair group of nominators, and what they've done with this slate is opened the race more than they've closed it. I mean, is anyone really ready to commit to a slate of five for supporting actor, or lead actress? I see 8 or 9 possibilities for the latter, and I wouldn't rule out major surprise in the former.

A few stray thoughts on the nominees: Jennifer Hudson can't be ruled out for an Oscar nod, but she also tracks very easily with the Emily Blunt/Girl on a Train slot that's often nabbed SAG and is summarily dismissed by AMPAS... I haven't seen Nightmare Alley yet (shooting for tomorrow), but I keep hearing Blanchett dominates her portion of the film, so maybe she's not so out of it as we think... Really pleased for Ruth Negga; I've seen all the other seeming contenders for supporting actress (save Blanchett), and Negga is my clear choice... The Tender Bar is no great shakes -- it has a weak second half, and a weird resemblance to Hillbilly Elegy -- but Ben Affleck is genuinely quite good in it, so I have no problem with his citation.

[rolotomasi99]

I think the WEST SIDE STORY snub is much more telling. A single nomination from SAG does not speak to strong support from the Acting branch. The SAG crowd seem much more inclined to love this movie than the slightly more high brow Academy. I doubt my wish of a total shut-out at the Oscars will happen, but any hope of it winning Best Picture seems diminished.

West Side Story was the only high profile movie this year not to send out screeners to the SAG nominating committee (which at any rate has little overlap with AMPAS).

Does a single committee cover all four individual acting categories and the two ensemble categories, or do all six film categories each have their own committee?

[dws1982]

I think the WEST SIDE STORY snub is much more telling. A single nomination from SAG does not speak to strong support from the Acting branch. The SAG crowd seem much more inclined to love this movie than the slightly more high brow Academy. I doubt my wish of a total shut-out at the Oscars will happen, but any hope of it winning Best Picture seems diminished.

West Side Story was the only high profile movie this year not to send out screeners to the SAG nominating committee (which at any rate has little overlap with AMPAS).

[mlrg]

* So... is Nicole Kidman winning Best Actress this year? It makes some degree of sense. It's been almost twenty years since her last win.

I wouldn't discard Stewart nor Colman yet. BAFTA is the main precursor, specially when it comes to the acting categories and I don't see Kidman winning the british base vote for playing such an american character (same case could be made for Zellwegger a couple of years ago, but Garland is much more universal than Lucille Ball).