SAG NOMINATIONS

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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by nightwingnova »

Anyone have theories regarding Eddie Redmayne's chances at the Oscars? Keaton's my sentimental favorite. Would be sad to see him not win.

Certainly, his loss takes some of the momentum out of Birdman's win at the PGA, confuses the playing field as to where the voters are leaning.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

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rolo, I wasn't trying to say you are wrong. I was trying to point out that while that may have been your opinion, at this point in the race, there isn't a general consensus. There were a lot of people who saw things very differently than you, and I also thought you had some timeline things a little off. I should also point out that if I recall, I was not hot on the Argo bandwagon at that point (I certainly thought the film would lose the moment Affleck's name was left off). Until nominations morning I saw it as the frontrunner, but then I was almost positive that Lincoln was going to be her winner, and it wasn't until the guilds that I started coming around to the fact that Argo could still win. I remember debating a lot with people (especially Oscarguy) who still saw Argo as a prohibitive frontrunner, but I wouldn't bet against precedent. I was wrong.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by The Original BJ »

rolo, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you that YOU saw that race the way YOU saw it. Only that your take on it was not by any means the general consensus at the time.

(My personal take on it the day before nominations was that Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty were the three movies duking it out for Picture/Director wins, and those were the three certain nominees in both categories. And, obviously, I was wrong, along with everyone else on the planet.)
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by rolotomasi99 »

FilmFan720 wrote:Wow, we are rewriting history here.

I will just remind you that Oscar nominations came out Tuesday morning, the BFCAs were that evening and the Globes were on Sunday. Globe and BFCA ballots were already mailed in when the Oscar nods were announced, so Argo's two wins at both of those places was in no way a reaction to Affleck's snub. The film was already picking up speed when the nominations came out. Many of us thought the Director slot might slow the film down, but instead it just continued to push it forward. Nomination morning I would say Argo was already the favorite, but only marginally so.
Those two wins come after the nominations were announced. I was talking about my immediate reaction to Affleck's snub. On the morning of the Oscar nominations, I was surprised but not shocked by the snub because ARGO had faded from the front of the race. The Academy snubbing him just confirmed that things really were over for the film. Then he won the BFCA, which at the time meant very little to me. The BFCA is not a group I paid much attention to, but they actually have a pretty good track record in guessing the Oscar Best Picture winner. I was unaware of that at the time, so I just thought it was a funny irony for him to be snubbed by the Oscars and then immediately win (what I considered) a meaningless award. Then he won the Golden Globe, but that actually was a strike against him since the Best Picture (Drama) winner rarely goes on to win the Oscar. After that, every single Oscar related article I read was about poor Ben. Then the Guilds started awarding ARGO, and the damn thing became unstoppable.

If you considered ARGO the front runner the day before the nominations were announced, then congrats! By that point I had written it off as a Best Picture winner, and to me its poor showing in the nominations (not just Ben's snub but LINCOLN, LIFE OF PI, LES MISERABLES, and SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK all had more nominations) confirmed what I suspected. Obviously history shows your optimism was correct, but I am telling you honest to gawd I did not consider ARGO a possible Best Picture frontrunner until it started winning the Guild awards. Why would I rewrite history to make myself sound more wrong? Obviously that link proves the folks at AwardsDaily were thinking the same way as me. I totally admit FilmFan720 you were right and we were wrong, but stop acting like every single person knew ARGO was the frontrunner the morning the Oscar nominations were announced. Nothing up to that point in the awards season gave us reason to consider it the potential winner.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by FilmFan720 »

Wow, we are rewriting history here.

I will just remind you that Oscar nominations came out Tuesday morning, the BFCAs were that evening and the Globes were on Sunday. Globe and BFCA ballots were already mailed in when the Oscar nods were announced, so Argo's two wins at both of those places was in no way a reaction to Affleck's snub. The film was already picking up speed when the nominations came out. Many of us thought the Director slot might slow the film down, but instead it just continued to push it forward. Nomination morning I would say Argo was already the favorite, but only marginally so.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

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The Original BJ wrote:I don't want to harp on the particulars of this bygone race, except to say that I think you should go back and read some of the 2012 prediction threads, rolo.

When you say that Affleck's omission was surprising but not shocking, I couldn't disagree more -- I was totally floored, as were most people. It was THE story of nominations morning. (In fact, I remember watching the nominations being read off -- in non-alphabetical order that year -- and seeing the pictures of all five guys on the screen at the end, and realizing female Bigelow had been excluded. It hadn't even registered until a friend texted me minutes later that Affleck had been omitted too.) Your contention that Affleck was "strong but vulnerable" seems to fly in the face of everything I remember about that race.

Similarly, the contention that Hooper was out the moment the DGA nominations were announced seems even greater revisionist history. Maybe YOU thought he was out. (I, too, thought he was vulnerable, and didn't end of predicting him). But I remember plenty of people talking about how Hooper was as likely a nominee as his film was at that point. It was only AFTER the jaw-dropping Affleck/Bigelow Oscar snubs created such a big story, it got lost in the shuffle that people had been trumpeting Hooper pretty loudly too, because his omission just wasn't as earth-shaking as those others.

All of this is to say, much as I admire Zero Dark Thirty, and much as I would have wanted Bigelow on the Director list that year, I see no evidence she was blocked out because she was a woman, any more than I see evidence that she won her prize several years earlier BECAUSE she was a woman. (Actually, I see more evidence for the latter, since there was plenty of hoopla about people wanting a woman to finally win.) As Mister Tee says, it was just a crowded field, and I don't think the allegations that the movie endorsed torture helped her any either.

All of this is to say, while it remains to be seen whether or not DuVernay will get an Oscar nomination -- she sure seems on track as of this morning -- if she doesn't, I find it really hard to believe it's because of racism or sexism. (And I hope that doesn't make me sound like an overprivileged white guy.)
This is the timeline as I remember it:
http://www.awardsdaily.com/blog/2013/01 ... emys-list/

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, LINCOLN, LES MISERABLES, and ZERO DARK THIRTY were all getting the attention. ARGO was a popular movie with both critics and audiences, but so were many films (the four I just mentioned plus LIFE OF PI and DJANGO UNCAHINED). 2012 was a really strong year, where the taste of the critics and audiences actually lined up. There was nothing special about ARGO to pull it out of the pack. Then Ben Affleck gets snubbed and everything seemed to turn in his movie's direction. All the press was about poor Ben being left out, and that helped pull ARGO stick out in the crowd. After all, the movie only won two other awards (for writing and editing). It is not as if this was some SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE juggernaut. It did not even have a strong performance pulling it along like THE KING'S SPEECH and THE ARTIST. It was just the movie that everyone settled on. Affleck being snubbed was the best thing he could have hoped for.

I remember someone on this board floating the theory that Brooks was snubbed for BROADCAST NEWS because the director's branch was pissed he beat Bergman several years earlier. I know there is no way to know that for sure, but it is as good an explanation as I have seen for how they actually thought Adrian Lyne deserved a nomination over Brooks. That type of insanity has to be explained somehow, and spite seems like the best answer I can come up with.

The same pettiness is what I think happened with Bigelow. It was not that they disliked her specifically for being a woman, they were just pissed she was better at the job then most of them. If she had made something completely different in-between THE HURT LOCKER and ZERO DARK THIRTY (like Oliver Stone did with WALL STREET between his two Vietnam films) then maybe they would have been less resentful. However, the one-two punch of her critically lauded Middle East war films was too much for these old, white men and their sensitive egos. I know the vicious attacks about the movie endorsing torture hurt it a little, but those same assholes attacked THE WOLF OF WALL STREET the next year and Scorsese survived.

I do not think for a second they would not nominate DuVernay because she is a woman or black, but I also think they are not inclined to give that any special consideration. That seems more like something the actor's branch does, but certainly not the directors.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by The Original BJ »

I don't want to harp on the particulars of this bygone race, except to say that I think you should go back and read some of the 2012 prediction threads, rolo.

When you say that Affleck's omission was surprising but not shocking, I couldn't disagree more -- I was totally floored, as were most people. It was THE story of nominations morning. (In fact, I remember watching the nominations being read off -- in non-alphabetical order that year -- and seeing the pictures of all five guys on the screen at the end, and realizing female Bigelow had been excluded. It hadn't even registered until a friend texted me minutes later that Affleck had been omitted too.) Your contention that Affleck was "strong but vulnerable" seems to fly in the face of everything I remember about that race.

Similarly, the contention that Hooper was out the moment the DGA nominations were announced seems even greater revisionist history. Maybe YOU thought he was out. (I, too, thought he was vulnerable, and didn't end of predicting him). But I remember plenty of people talking about how Hooper was as likely a nominee as his film was at that point. It was only AFTER the jaw-dropping Affleck/Bigelow Oscar snubs created such a big story, it got lost in the shuffle that people had been trumpeting Hooper pretty loudly too, because his omission just wasn't as earth-shaking as those others.

All of this is to say, much as I admire Zero Dark Thirty, and much as I would have wanted Bigelow on the Director list that year, I see no evidence she was blocked out because she was a woman, any more than I see evidence that she won her prize several years earlier BECAUSE she was a woman. (Actually, I see more evidence for the latter, since there was plenty of hoopla about people wanting a woman to finally win.) As Mister Tee says, it was just a crowded field, and I don't think the allegations that the movie endorsed torture helped her any either.

All of this is to say, while it remains to be seen whether or not DuVernay will get an Oscar nomination -- she sure seems on track as of this morning -- if she doesn't, I find it really hard to believe it's because of racism or sexism. (And I hope that doesn't make me sound like an overprivileged white guy.)
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

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Mister Tee wrote:I'll also echo BJ: unless Selma's best picture potential totally evaporates, DuVernay is, along with Linklater and Innaritu, the most assured of directing nominees. I find the idea that Bigelow was omitted two years ago because she was a woman completely unpersuasive; she simply got boxed out in a very crowded field (as did a fairly notable white guy the same morning).

Or, an alternate theory I've seen floating around that I find fascinating: ever since the infamous James L. Brooks Broadcast News omission, the directors' branch has shown a marked tendency not to nominate Oscar winning directors for their next films, even ones that flirted with or actively contended for best film/director nods. Consider the following winners and their follow-up, non-directing-nominated films: Oliver Stone (Wall Street), Barry Levinson (Avalon), Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia), Clint Eastwood (A Perfect World), Steven Spielberg (Amistad), Anthony Minghella (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition), Coen Brothers (A Serious Man), Danny Boyle (127 Hours), Tom Hooper (Les Miz) -- the last three, along with Bigelow, best picture nominees without corresponding directing nods. (The only exceptions: James Cameron -- whose 12 year gap between films made it not feel like his next film -- and Eastwood the second time, though theoretically Flags of Our Fathers came between Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima.) So maybe Bigelow just fell prey to this tendency, which has penalized a lot more white men than women.
Well that is certainly an interesting theory. I would point out that of your examples cited, only the last three films were nominated for Best Picture, and only two (Spielberg and Hooper) were nominated by the DGA. I acknowledge that 2012 was a strange year for the DGA and Academy. Usually one director gets nominated by the former while snubbed by the latter and two is rare but not unheard of, but three discrepancies was shocking. Some say it was because the Academy had already voted by the time the DGA noms were announced, but ARGO and ZERO DARK THIRTY were winning other awards early into awards season. When I saw the DGA noms, I am pretty sure I was not alone in assuming Hooper would be replaced by Michael Haneke. Russell replacing Affleck as well was surprising but not shocking. For Ben Zeitlin to replace Bigelow though was shocking. I really admired what he did with BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, particularly on such a small budget, but it could not compare to the mastery of what Bigelow pulled off in ZERO DARK THIRTY. I was expecting some jingoistic action movie like LONE SURVIVOR, but instead I got a haunting film more interested in the hunt then the kill. In many ways, both tonally and stylistically it reminded me of one of my favorite films, ZODIAC.

I am well aware that there is no way to correlate one of the three DGA snubbees being directly replaced by one of the three directors the Academy chose. I am just explaining the scenarios I saw playing out prior to the nominations being announced. Haneke seemed guaranteed, Russell seemed possible, and Zeitlin was not even a possibility in my mind. Likewise, Hooper was out the moment the DGA nominations were announced, Affleck seemed strong but still vulnerable, and Bigelow was a lock nominee with a possible second win. ARGO had not secured its frontrunner status at that point, and all the other DGA nominees had previously won Oscars (Spielberg twice) so Bigelow seemed just as possible for another win as any of the men. ZERO DARK THIRTY was doing very well with the critics awards, and it seemed like such a perfect movie to celebrate Obama's re-election. However, once Affleck was snubbed, the story shifted to ARGO. Much like how people talk about poor Ron Howard being snubbed for APOLLO 13, they seem to forget the far more deserving Ang Lee was also ignored by the Academy that same year. Affleck was able to ride that sympathy farther than Howard, and poor Bigelow got ignored just like Lee.

If DuVernay gets in, I will certainly be celebrating. I just consider the directors' branch of the Academy a prickly little bunch who will not be swayed by anyone's feelings about making history. Interestingly, if they did nominate DuVernay and Iñárritu this year, it would the second in a row to have an African and Hispanic nominee. Slowly but surely the directors' branch is diversifying. That leaves just the cinematographer's branch as the only one not to nominate a woman, though thankfully they have nominated a few people of color.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

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Anyone want to explain how Get On Up got a Stunt nomination? Is there something I don't know about the film?
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by Mister Tee »

By the way, something that just occurred to me today: does anyone know why SAG releases it nominations at 6AM LA time? We know why the Oscars (and the Globes, on NBC) are done that way: to get in on the tail end of the morning news shows, for the big audience. But SAG announces on TNT/TBS, after that main audience has tuned out.

No skin off my East Coast-dwelling nose, but I'm surprised no one has suggested they sleep in a bit.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

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I'll co-sign all this supporting actress talk. There are some performances that are so clearly overwhelming, you can easily see them running away with the field, especially the supporting field. Waltz & Mo'Nique, because they appeared in the same season, and were so universally critic-lauded, are the most obvious cases, but other recent instances include Javier Bardem, Heath Ledger and Jared Leto; you could try to build a case why someone else had a chance, but you knew you were reaching. There are even performances to which I don't personally respond, either at that level or at all, but which I can see have that sort of impact for many: Bale in The Fighter, Spencer in The Help, Hudson in Dreamgirls. They, too, become undeniable favorites.

In this year's race, J. K. Simmons clearly meets that standard -- you see the film and think, there's someone who's going to win the Oscar. I just didn't have that feeling about Arquette's performance...even though, like BJ, I admire her work enormously, and would be perfectly happy to see her win for it. But the presumption that she's a sweep-winner feels like overkill. This scenario comes, of course, from the bloggers, and it may arise from their worst tendency: their need to be so in-the-know on everything that it translates to having to establish The Choice in every category -- even when not every category clearly has one. (They're trying to do the same for Michael Keaton in actor, but there I think saner minds see the Redmayne/Cumberbatch/Oyelowo pile-up, and are shying away a bit) As flipp implies, let's first see who the nominees are -- to cite the most famous case, Marisa Tomei wasn't anyone's radar as even a nominee at this point, yet ended up the winner. Such surprises are harder to pull off these days, with our 365-day-a-year coverage and shorter voting season, but we still ought to allow for the slate of nominees to at least coalesce. I think any of the names BJ mentions could end up on the ballot, and potentially win -- unless the televised awards go unanimous, as they maddeningly did for Melissa Leo in what ought to have been a more interesting race.

By the way: the Awards Watch folk (who tout themselves as "the best awards prognosticators in the business" -- as if that's some badge of honor) are suddenly today coming around to the idea of Grand Budapest Hotel as potential best picture nominee. Welcome, people.

I'll also echo BJ: unless Selma's best picture potential totally evaporates, DuVernay is, along with Linklater and Innaritu, the most assured of directing nominees. I find the idea that Bigelow was omitted two years ago because she was a woman completely unpersuasive; she simply got boxed out in a very crowded field (as did a fairly notable white guy the same morning).

Or, an alternate theory I've seen floating around that I find fascinating: ever since the infamous James L. Brooks Broadcast News omission, the directors' branch has shown a marked tendency not to nominate Oscar winning directors for their next films, even ones that flirted with or actively contended for best film/director nods. Consider the following winners and their follow-up, non-directing-nominated films: Oliver Stone (Wall Street), Barry Levinson (Avalon), Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia), Clint Eastwood (A Perfect World), Steven Spielberg (Amistad), Anthony Minghella (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition), Coen Brothers (A Serious Man), Danny Boyle (127 Hours), Tom Hooper (Les Miz) -- the last three, along with Bigelow, best picture nominees without corresponding directing nods. (The only exceptions: James Cameron -- whose 12 year gap between films made it not feel like his next film -- and Eastwood the second time, though theoretically Flags of Our Fathers came between Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima.) So maybe Bigelow just fell prey to this tendency, which has penalized a lot more white men than women.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by The Original BJ »

In addition to my thought that Chastain could pull out a win (assuming she even gets nominated), I think people are seriously underrating Emma Stone's chances at an actual victory as well. I wouldn't at all be surprised to see her win the Golden Globe -- she's exactly the kind of hot young starlet the HFPA has annointed even more than the Academy has in the Supporting Actress category. She has a strong role, with one really terrific scene in Birdman. And, depending on how the other categories shake out (especially if one of the Brits clearly pulls ahead of Keaton in Best Actor), Supporting Actress could present itself as a major place to honor the movie.

And, though I don't think her performance is as strong, it seems way too early to rule out Keira Knightley too. She's in much the same career spot as Stone (though with the added bonus of her previous nomination), in a role that has all kinds of pluses -- it's sizable, the only woman in a movie dominated by men, this category's favorite long-suffering wife character, buoyed by a film that's destined to get attention across the board.

In no way do I mean to knock down Patricia Arquette from her seeming frontrunner status -- I'm a fan of her performance and her movie, and I'd be perfectly happy to see her go all the way. But I'm just not sensing the total inevitability many are just because she won two critics awards, when it seems like there are plenty of other viable win options. (I mean, at the time Boyhood opened, the response to her performance seemed more like "she MIGHT get nominated" than "she's DEFINITELY winning the Oscar.")
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by flipp525 »

rolotomasi99 wrote:
flipp525 wrote:
rolotomasi99 wrote:Just looking back a few years, there is usually one or two SAG nominees from each category that miss out on an Oscar nomination. It is very possible the four most surprising nominees this year (Gyllenhaal, Aniston, Watts, Duvall) will not spoil our Oscar predix. 2009 is an anomaly in how closely the SAG and Oscar nominations matched.
Um, but I want the Oscar predix to be spoiled. There's nothing worse than a total slate of ho-hum expected nominations on Oscar nom morning. For example, I think a category like Best Supporting Actress is ripe for a Marcia Gay Harden-type dark horse to come in this year. As Mister Tee keeps invoking, Patricia Arquette (as good as she is in Boyhood - and, yes, ITALIANO, it's a good performance) is no Mo'Nique.
Are you saying you want the predictions to be spoiled simply to keep things interesting, or because you find the current general consensus to be a bad crop of potential nominees? Gyllenhaal would be a spoiler I could celebrate, while Watts would be an unwelcome shift from the common wisdom in the acting categories. If the popular predictions are going to be upended, please let the interlopers be worthy of crashing the party.

As for Supporting Actress, do you have a certain person in mind to pull off this shocking win? Chastain, maybe.
I'm not really sure who, I feel like someone like Laura Dern could come in and take this (although I really wouldn't consider her such a dark horse at this point; she's on several lists already). Hollywood royalty comeback kind of thing.

But it could just as easily be one of the more off-the-radar types like Carrie Coon who hasn't yet made a precursor appearance who gets a surprise nod on Oscar morning and then wins. This just feels like the kind of year where that category gets a surprise winner. It seems to happen every seven years or so in Best Supporting Actress (Marisa Tomei - 1992, Marcia Gay Harden - 2000, Tilda Swinton - 2007, ???? - 2014)
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by Mister Tee »

Greg wrote:
FilmFan720 wrote:Selma is surprisingly missing, Into the Woods and Unbroken each only get one nomination (both of which could have been voted on sight unseen) while American Sniper and A Most Violent Year are also unnominated.
Unbroken did not receive any nominations. Did you mean some other film?
It got the (uncited here) Stunt Ensemble nod.
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Re: SAG NOMINATIONS

Post by Greg »

FilmFan720 wrote:Selma is surprisingly missing, Into the Woods and Unbroken each only get one nomination (both of which could have been voted on sight unseen) while American Sniper and A Most Violent Year are also unnominated.
Unbroken did not receive any nominations. Did you mean some other film?
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