SAG nominations

[Mister Tee]

Apparently, No Time to Die won Stunt Ensemble. (And Squid Game the corresponding prize for TV, for those interested.)

[Mister Tee]

Just two short years ago, for the second time in 3 years, SAG ratified the four acting categories as already set forth by the Globes and Broadcasters; BAFTA soon followed, and it looked like the suspense-less Oscars would continue into infinity. (Best cast category exempt: SAG, having recently chosen out-there things like Hidden Figures and Black Panther, scrambled the board in picking Parasite, which helped lead to its great Oscar triumph.)

Since then: 1) SAG has added "influencers" to an already-AFTRA-augmented voting pool, moving further into the populist lane; 2) They whiffed on both lead acting categories in 2020, first time ever; 3) BAFTA has staged its "lets try and be diverse even though our members are overwhelmingly bland-white" experiment, which makes them less likely to fall in line with decreed consensus; 4) AMPAS' expansion of its voter rolls, concentrating on ethnic and national variety, may have reached a tipping point, separating its choices from those set forth by the pundit world.

Which brings us to this year, where, as noted, SAG/AMPAS disagreement hit an all-time high (its one congruent category, lead actor, was easy to achieve, given only one true open slot), and where the delay in the Broadcasters' announcing winners means SAG isn't third in line, confronting a dreary consensus, but second, after a Globe presentation that was un-telecast. All this puts us in a position where SAG voters are picking more blindly than usual, where we're not quite sure it's the SAG to which we've been accustomed, where BAFTA likely won't serve as echo (and if they do in best actress, it'll be someone who can't repeat at AMPAS), and where we don't know if any of this will turn out significant to the Oscars as it has in the recent past.

In short: good times!

So, to the categories:

Stunt Ensemble: I have no idea on what basis SAG folk choose this (or even how many bother to vote on it). Dune is the class choice, but has less in the way of stunts than No Time to Die. It'll be one of them, and I honestly don't much care which.

Supporting actress: Even in a competitive year, someone always seems to get a bye -- the Jennifer Connelly "we're not even looking at anybody else" slot -- and Ariana DeBose appears to be this year's choice. Whatever West Side Story's overall position, she seems a sure thing.

Supporting actor: Most punditry seems to concentrate on the only two AMPAS matches, Smit-McPhee and Kotsur. There's an odd rationale out there, suggesting that Kotsur doesn't have to win because he might win as part of best cast. I don't see evidence anyone but Oscar bloggers think that way -- does Amy Adams think of herself as a SAG winner because she was part of the American Hustle ensemble? I sure don't. I think this is kind of a toss-up, and will turn on whether SAG has tilted significantly populist, in which case Kotsur, or whether it's doing its best to stay critically respectable, in which case it's Smit-McPhee. And, if it's the latter, the Oscar race is probably finished.

Lead actress: I can't see Jennifer Hudson having any hope, and Olivia Colman also seems a less-likely entry. But any of the remaining three could pull through. I still think of Kidman as a Globe-induced mirage (again, for those who've forgotten: the Globe is the sole prize she's won all year). But she has some assets: never won a Globe for film work; playing an American acting icon; nominated alongside her co-star. If she wins, I'll have to reluctantly reassess my stance toward her Oscar prospects (though I still wouldn't make her a shoo-in). There's a ton of Avenge the Oscar Omission talk out there for Lady Gaga, and, my god, if there's anyplace Influencers might make a difference, it'd be in the cause of the Twitter/Instagram Queen. I could definitely enjoy her winning, simply because it would heighten the already chaotic state of this race. But, even better would be for her to lose here and then win at BAFTA -- lose, that is, to Jessica Chastain. Chastain has been sort of the anti-Kidman in this race: consistently underrated, predicted to miss at every turn but always showing up, pundits overlooking the fact she gives the kind of all-out turn that actors traditionally adore. It's super-close, but I say the actors come through for Chastain.

Lead actor: I'm 100% in line with Sabin, here. All precedent would argue for Will Smith: beloved superstar in a film that got a Best Cast nomination, at the Guild that's been far more beneficent toward African-American performers than any other. But every SAG voter I speak to absolutely LOVES Andrew Garfield in tick...tick...Boom! I thought this might be a parochial thing -- for NY showbizers, the film is a love letter; our lives on film -- but Sabin hearing the same thing on his coast suggests to me it's an actor thing in general. It still may turn out misleading buzz, like the 2020 Democratic primary was for Bernie. But it seems real to me, and I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Garfield eked out a victory.

Cast: This is a very strange roster -- full up with movies that seem like they COULD win, but nothing close to an obvious choice. (Like, for instance, Three Billboards for its dominant performances, or Parasite for overall love.) Belfast could be Spotlight -- which also missed supporting acting nominations, and seemed too mild to evoke excitement, but, as the strongest best picture hopeful, won out in the end. Don't Look Up could be American Hustle, winning on flat-out star power. House of Gucci or King Richard could be Argo, a middle-of-the-road choice that doesn't much offend anyone. But, as I mentioned when talking about the film last week, I'm leaning toward CODA. I've spoken with several people in the past week who, unprompted, told me how much they liked the movie. (I bit my tongue to save friendships.) I think this has the Hidden Figures schmaltz factor going for it, and actors are all too vulnerable to that (with a more-populist voting roster pushing it even further that direction). None of the nominees can be ruled out, but, in the end, I fear it's CODA.

[Big Magilla]

My predictions:

Female Actor: Jessica Chastain (RU: Olivia Colman)
Male Actor: Benedict Cumberbatch (RU: Andrew Garfield)
Supporting Female: Kirsten Dunst (RU: Ruth Negga)
Supporting Male: Kodi Smit-McPhee (RU: Troy Kotsur)
Ensemble: Belfast (RU: CODA)

I have to have something to be optimistic about in these dark days.

[rolotomasi99]

SAG PREDICTIONS
Interesting that both Supporting Actor and Actress only had 2/5 lineup with the Academy. Is this a record?

This year is a record overall for largest number of differences between SAG noms and Oscar noms: 8

As for individual categories, these are the years (of movie release) with a 2/5 mismatch:
2015 - Supporting Actor
1996 - Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor
1995 - Supporting Actor
1994 - Supporting Actress

2001 (movie releases) saw the SAG Supporting Actress category have only one common nominee with the Oscars! Over all the years, Supporting Actress was the least consistent with the Oscars while Lead Actor was the most consistent.

In terms of winning, 2000 (movie releases) had only 1 of the SAG winners take an award in their corresponding Oscar category.

Interestingly, in instances where the winners do not match between the two groups, it was often because the Oscars did not even nominate the SAG winner.

With all that in mind, here are my predictions:

Lead Actress: Lady Gaga
Lead Actor: Will Smith
Supporting Actress: Caitríona Balfe
Supporting Actor: Troy Kotsur
Ensemble: Don't Look Up

[Sabin]

SAG PREDICTIONS
Interesting that both Supporting Actor and Actress only had 2/5 lineup with the Academy. Is this a record?

Best Ensemble: CODA

Best Male Lead: Will Smith, King Richard
... but every SAG voters I've spoken to has voted for Andrew Garfield. Every one.

Best Female Lead: Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
... I think the Chastain thing starts here. I've spoken to a few voters who love her and The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

Best Supporting Male: Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog
... I'm going back and forth between Kotsur and Smit-McPhee but I can't deny that Smit-McPhee has momentum.

Best Supporting Female: Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
... I could see Dunst as well. It doesn't seem that they like West Side Story much.

Best Stunt Performance: Dune
... I could see it being No Time to Die. This group is a little more populist than one might think. The last four winners are comic book films.

[Sabin]

rolotomasi99 wrote
Sadly, Cruz was left off the BAFTA long list. I certainly hope she makes it to the Oscars, and Banderas' nomination a few years ago gives me reason to be optimistic. Of course, he had the Golden Globe nomination but that seems less important this year.

Oh, really? Well, that’s a blow to her chances. Perhaps it’s just a testament to Parallel Mother’s not really being one of the season’s hot tickets.

Well… I’m open to others’ opinion.

[rolotomasi99]

Penelope Cruz? She might be the critic's choice (no Globe or SAG though; perhaps a BAFTA?) but I get the sense that Parallel Mothers isn't quite the hot ticket this season. But Pain and Glory wasn't either and Penelope Cruz is already in the club, so...

Honestly, the more I write this, the more I think Penelope Cruz's chances might be underrated. I'm not much a fan of her film but it's a very clear, emotive performance.

Sadly, Cruz was left off the BAFTA long list. I certainly hope she makes it to the Oscars, and Banderas' nomination a few years ago gives me reason to be optimistic. Of course, he had the Golden Globe nomination but that seems less important this year.

[Mister Tee]

Insane. Especially considering that I really do think we're slightly in the middle of a period of real openness for foreign-language entertainment. Another Round picked up a surprising Best Director award this past year and Squid Game is a sensation.They blew it.

Don't forget Money Heist -- a Spanish series Netflix picked up, that became such a hit they ordered subsequent "seasons", even though the show was meant as a one-off.

It's a sort of footnote to the #oscarsssowhite campaign: in addition to diversifying ethnically, the Oscar rolls invited in significant numbers of non-English-speaking members, and that's had maybe greater impact. The directing branch, in particular, expanded its international roster, which may explain the high number of foreign films nominated in the past several years (Cold War and Another Round, in addition to the best picture contenders Roma and Parasite).

[Sabin]

Okri wrote
Neon also has Spencer and Flee (and Titane and Memoria, but... well, you know). They're small enough that multiple film campaigning is difficult (Dropping Clemency in 2019 when a campaign might have brought Alfre Woodard an oscar nomination, for example - we've seen A24 and even Fox Searchlight struggle with that in the past). I really think they thought Spencer was going to be their one big oscar film, and now Stewart seems like she could even miss a nomination. I'd still say she's in, but the category is enjoyably amorphous.

You're right. 2019 might have been their big year but really it was just because they pushed Parasite as hard as they could. Honeyland did well also and Apollo 11 was a big hit but surprisingly came up short for an Oscar. Nothing really hit for them last year, although they had Palm Springs to their credit. They probably thought they had something with Ammonite but that flopped. This year, they have a pretty incredible crop of films but they would have been better served splitting their energies with Spencer across Pig and The Worst Person in the World, or just the latter as it's by all accounts a crowd-pleaser.

[Okri]

Neon also has Spencer and Flee (and Titane and Memoria, but... well, you know). They're small enough that multiple film campaigning is difficult (Dropping Clemency in 2019 when a campaign might have brought Alfre Woodard an oscar nomination, for example - we've seen A24 and even Fox Searchlight struggle with that in the past). I really think they thought Spencer was going to be their one big oscar film, and now Stewart seems like she could even miss a nomination. I'd still say she's in, but the category is enjoyably amorphous.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
Neon's strategy on this (and I know someone involved in it) is baffling: they seem to have banked everything on an "open around nominations time and shoot for International Film". This, first of all, didn't anticipate the critical groundswell for Drive My Car, which has made International Film an uphill battle for everyone else. But it also seems to have ruled out the possibility of actress, screenplay and (if you want to dream) directing nods for the film.

Neon is releasing it?? That's insane. The company that did one of the most ingenious campaigns for a film that kicked down the door for international features to compete with the rest of them has a young person's film on their hands, a zeitgeist-y rom com in a time where all everyone wants to watch something transporting and relatable at home, and they've decided what they really want to be is Sony Pictures Classics.

Insane. Especially considering that I really do think we're slightly in the middle of a period of real openness for foreign-language entertainment. Another Round picked up a surprising Best Director award this past year and Squid Game is a sensation.They blew it.

As for your previous point, what I did a terrible job of saying was that most of the Best Actress contenders are in films that won't make the cut for Best Picture. There's a larger conversation to be had about films that compete for Best Actress and the Academy's sentiment towards women's stories vs. the ones they more openly embrace in the Best Picture category (which to be fair, very much varies year to year) but I chopped it down for brevity's sake. Being the Ricardos, The Lost Daughter, House of Gucci, and Spencer all feel like films that probably end up in the top fifteen or so, are taken for Best Picture consideration at some point during Oscar season, like Bombshell for example, but just don't quite make the cut. Rachel Zegler, Alana Haim, and Emilia Jones are very much in Best Picture contenders but they don't seem to be taken seriously for a nomination let alone a win which is quite odd. I do wonder if Haim's chances are underrated.

[Big Magilla]

If it were up to me, the nominees, based on performances I've seen, would be Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter, Jennifer Hudson in Respect, Nicole Kidman in Being the Ricardos, and Martha Plimpton in Mass.

Outside chances: Penelope Cruz in Parallel Mothers, Jodie Comer in The Last Duel.

No Kristen Stewart. No Lady Gaga.

The chances of Plimpton being nominated at all are slim, and the chances of her being nominated in lead as opposed to support are next to nil, but we need something like that to shake the race up.

[Mister Tee]

I'm not going to include Renate Reinsve. Everyone I know wants to see this film but it just seems as though her film is being kept a secret for too long.

Neon's strategy on this (and I know someone involved in it) is baffling: they seem to have banked everything on an "open around nominations time and shoot for International Film". This, first of all, didn't anticipate the critical groundswell for Drive My Car, which has made International Film an uphill battle for everyone else. But it also seems to have ruled out the possibility of actress, screenplay and (if you want to dream) directing nods for the film.

[Mister Tee]

I'm going to save most of my best actress handicapping for a thread I'm working on about the four acting categories, but my condensed rejoinder:

You may know the anecdote, Robert Browning being asked by a class what a particular line of his poetry meant. His answer: "When I wrote that, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant; now, it's only God". My variation on this is, a week ago, I thought the only best actress candidate who couldn't possibly miss was Kristen Stewart; now, that list consists of no one.

Which is to say, I don't accept the four SAG nominees you cite are impregnable, or even necessarily the strongest for AMPAS. I think it's charitable to describe Ricardos/Gucci/Lost Daughter as even on the best picture bubble -- I'd be shocked if more than one of them made it, and all of them missing wouldn't remotely surprise. A full list of non-best picture nominees is rare enough, but especially when you have two candidates (Haim and Zegler) from near-certain picture/director candidates.

My feeling is (and, again, I'll elaborate on this in a hopeflly-not-far-off piece) there are 8 or 9 solidly believable contenders for the five best actress slots, and it's going to be a game of musical chairs determining who the nominated five are. And if the music stops at the precisely eight or wrong time, anyone can miss theiir slot.

[Sabin]

I said as much in my preface, except for the notion that Kristen Stewart might not be held in high esteem by her peers, which is certainly possible.

As of now, I still think she'll get a nomination. I'm struggling to think of who will replace her.

We're looking at Nicole Kidman from Being the Ricardos, Olivia Colman from The Lost Daughter, and Lady Gaga from House of Gucci, all of which are in films that are on the Best Picture bubble. We're looking at possibly another Best Actress lineup where few or none of the actress' journeys are in films that the Academy also honors as among the year's best overall. Despite her film bombing, Jessica Chastain also seems to be in the running, which I'm perfectly fine with. I'm very hit or miss on her in general but she's quite good in the film. She should please do things like this in the future.

Generally, we can agree those are the four. Who's up? Kristen Stewart is certainly in the running although she's faced certain obstacles you've listed above. If truly voters just aren't enamored with her performance in Spencer and don't like her as an actor, who reaps the benefit?

But who's that going to be? Is is Jennifer Hudson going to pick up the fifth nomination for Respect? I haven't seen Respect but it seems to have the inverse issue that Spencer has: more popular with audiences than critics. I don't mean to minimize Jennifer Hudson's performance (I'm sure she's good) but I wonder if this is the case of SAG-AFTRA being more enthusiastic about a film about race, gender, etc, than the Academy.

Penelope Cruz? She might be the critic's choice (no Globe or SAG though; perhaps a BAFTA?) but I get the sense that Parallel Mothers isn't quite the hot ticket this season. But Pain and Glory wasn't either and Penelope Cruz is already in the club, so...

Rachel Zegler has a National Board of Review Award and a Golden Globe. That should do it, right? And yet, I don't get the feeling that anyone thinks she's any sort of a sure thing. Is it due to West Side Story's falling chances (or perception) or that her Golden Globe was a bit more for Musical than Performance? If Alana Haim won, we'd certainly be talking about her rising chances.

Alana Haim getting nominated would be lovely, wouldn't it? If we knew how enthusiastic more Academy looped-groups were about Licorice Pizza overall maybe we should start taking her more seriously. Same with Emilia Jones.

I'm not going to include Renate Reinsve. Everyone I know wants to see this film but it just seems as though her film is being kept a secret for too long.

Honestly, the more I write this, the more I think Penelope Cruz's chances might be underrated. I'm not much a fan of her film but it's a very clear, emotive performance.