Screen Actors Guild Awards

[Uri]

Meryl appeared on Nightline in an interview with Cynthia McFadden; Huffington Post has two highlights, discussing how unpleasant it is to lose an Oscar and sexism in the world and in the movies; link.

Do you think McFadden, Kate Hepburn's confidant, did actually hear those click, click, click when she interviewed Streep?

[Big Magilla]

Here's the link to the Piven article from The Post's Page Six Magazine.

http://www.nypost.com/pagesix....Showbiz

[Hustler]

IMO, Kate is in the pole position this year given the fact that her performance in the reader for which she was considered in supporting turned out to be lead, but it´s still the same performance. On the other hand Streep won the sag just because 1) two consecutive awards to Kate would have been too much 2) Streep had been never awarded for a Sag in a motion picture category before.

[The Original BJ]

I've never heard anyone who's worked with Jeremy Piven say anything remotely kind about him.

[Big Magilla]

Piven is dead meat in much of the acting community for his Prima Donna antics in Broadway's Speed-the-Plow revival culminating in his allegedly leaving the show due to mercury poisoning.

I've heard a lot of people jump on Piven for this, and, for all I know, he's a total shithead who deserves the abuse.

But...it seems to me many are assuming the mercury poisoning is a complete lie essentially because it SOUNDS silly. What if it's a serious medical condition that could kill the guy?

(Magilla, should it come off that way, I don't mean to be picking arguments with you today. You just happen to have pushed a few of my buttons)

Pick away, I'm used to it by now.

I hate it when these threads go off-topic, especially when I'm the cause of it.

I wish I could find the link, but I read a detailed article on-line a week ago about the Piven affair I had no more knowledge of than you. It was very interesting.

According to the article, mercury poisoning can come from eating too much fish, but the usual cure is to stop eating fish for three months. Piven hadn't eaten fish for six months prior to consulting a doctor in Connecticut he had never seen before and got the doctor agree that he could be suffering from mercury poisoning and used that to abruptly quit the play.

According to cast members and others associated with the show, Piven wanted out of his contract as soon as the high of opening night wore off. He found saying the same lines night after night tedious. He asked the producers to let him go a month before the end of the limited run on 2/22. When they turned him down he came up with the mercury excuse.

Even if it were true, he made a miraculous recovery in time for the Globes, didn't he?



Edited By Big Magilla on 1233613921

[Penelope]

Meryl appeared on Nightline in an interview with Cynthia McFadden; Huffington Post has two highlights, discussing how unpleasant it is to lose an Oscar and sexism in the world and in the movies; link.

[FilmFan720]

The word, though, is that Piven was trying to leave (supposedly Macy had been set to come in for months, as Piven was gone after the Golden Globes). There seems to be a feeling that he didn't want to wait longer, his performances were getting lazier and he was starting to act out on stage. He rushed things with this mercury poisoning, real or not.

[Mister Tee]

Piven is dead meat in much of the acting community for his Prima Donna antics in Broadway's Speed-the-Plow revival culminating in his allegedly leaving the show due to mercury poisoning.

I've heard a lot of people jump on Piven for this, and, for all I know, he's a total shithead who deserves the abuse.

But...it seems to me many are assuming the mercury poisoning is a complete lie essentially because it SOUNDS silly. What if it's a serious medical condition that could kill the guy?

I can't help feeling that "a dingo took my baby" was widely disbelieved because it sounded ridiculous in the same way. But it turned out to be true, and in retrospect we all castigate those primitive Aussies for not divining the truth.

(Magilla, should it come off that way, I don't mean to be picking arguments with you today. You just happen to have pushed a few of my buttons)

I have no firm opinion on Winslet because I haven't seen The Reader yet. I would rate her Revolutionary performance above Streep in Doubt, but Kristen Scott Thomas above either. (Haven't seen Hawkins, Leo or Jolie either. Bad attendance year for me)

[Big Magilla]

If there was strong support for her winning a third Oscar this year methinks Kate would have been relegated to support in The Reader to make the way clear for her.

Yes, I'm sure that this issue was dealt with at the Acting Branch's Annual Pre-Nomination Meeting to Discuss Fairness.

Just saying.

I had a similar reaction, dws. Alot of faulty reasoning about Oscar nominations (and victories) proceeds from acting as if a Mr. Academy was making the selections guided by a single intelligence. In fact, it's the blended "wisdom" of up to thousands, which advertising and planted buzz can hope to steer but which in the end depends on individual choices gathered together in a sort of probability curve result.

Of course. I was referring to the consensus, or the seeming consensus.

I agree with BJ. Winslet probably had enough votes for three nominations if it weren't for rules prohbiitng two nominations in one category and two nominationsin separate categories for the same performance.

For all we know, she had one more vote for lead in The Reader than she had for supporting in The Reader and two more votes for The Reader in lead than she had for Revolutionary Road.

[Big Magilla]

Why was Katie Holmes, of all people, presenting the lead actor award last night? What is her relevance to film in general outside of being married to Tom Cruise?

It may have been meant as a rebuff to Jeremy Piven, nominated for the umpteenth time for Entourage.

Piven is dead meat in much of the acting community for his Prima Donna antics in Broadway's Speed-the-Plow revival culminating in his allegedly leaving the show due to mercury poisoning. Katie Holmes, on the other hand, was the darling of Broadway during her run in a supporting role in the revival of All My Sons.

Not only didn't she miss a performance, she stood her husband up at the Globes, where he was nominated, in order to appear in the closing night performance of the play something she could have easily gotten out of.

And she looked great. Methinks Ms. Holmes is having the last laugh after all the negative press she got for her marriage to the smiley one.

[Big Magilla]

I've never been a great Winslet fan, though I've always liked her, but her two 2008 performances are two of the best of any actress this decade and the two bests she's ever given in my estimation.

I originally bought into the idea of giving her two nominations and the supporting win for The Reader, with Meryl taking the lead award by default, but with her lead nomination for The Reader I don't see how there can be much of a contest. It's a choice between awarding a great performance and and a popular actress in a good one.

[The Original BJ]

I bet Winslet probably had enough votes for three nominations, and ironically, likely enthusiasm to get her on the ballot anywhere possible resulted in only one nomination.

I can't vouch for any of the other Winslet fans, but I consider her performances in The Reader and Revolutionary Road to be the two best female performances of the year, and would vote for either one over and above her competition (especially the Hawkins-less Oscar slate.)

I think people are underestimating support for The Reader; the fact that it scored Picture/Director mentions when it seemed nearly out of the race helps Winslet immensely, by my estimation. (In much the same way that the surprising nomination total of The Cider House Rules ultimately prefigured its wins, in categories where it had hardly been running the precursors the way Winslet has.)

[flipp525]

It's basically the same self-deprecating speech she's been giving since winning the Globe for Adaptation.

To me, it basically wasn't. There was something new and fresh about it. She managed to convey her usual humility, even with a dose of "my win is really a win for all women this year" that came off genuine and not pre-canned. Yet, this time around, she also sort of let it be known that she wouldn't necessarily mind getting up there to accept another award again sometime soon.



Edited By flipp525 on 1233605572

[Mister Tee]

If there was strong support for her winning a third Oscar this year methinks Kate would have been relegated to support in The Reader to make the way clear for her.

Yes, I'm sure that this issue was dealt with at the Acting Branch's Annual Pre-Nomination Meeting to Discuss Fairness.

Just saying.

I had a similar reaction, dws. Alot of faulty reasoning about Oscar nominations (and victories) proceeds from acting as if a Mr. Academy was making the selections guided by a single intelligence. In fact, it's the blended "wisdom" of up to thousands, which advertising and planted buzz can hope to steer but which in the end depends on individual choices gathered together in a sort of probability curve result.

What we can say about Winslet is this: despite clear effort to locate her Reader performance in the supporting category, enough Academy members saw it as lead work (and voted for it that way) that it brought her a nomination, and may well have cut her off from other nomination-level support -- in lead for Revolutionary Road (on the one-nomination-per-category basis) and in support for The Reader (on the post-Barry Fitzgerald one-nomination-per-performance rule). We don't KNOW either of those thngs, but given precursor behavior, we can guess they might both be true.

I don't see how either of these things affect her competition with Meryl Steep, who, for all we know, got far more first place votes under actress than Winslet did for The Reader. It may be that Winslet's two roles together brought her immense support, but we don't know for sure that voters of Revolutionary Road will automatically transfer their allegiance in an any-Winslet-will-do spirit.

My guess is, had Winslet been nominated as expected (lead for Revolutionary, support for Reader), the whisper camapign would have pushed her so hard for The Reader -- and none of the competition there is formidable enough - that she'd have won the category. (Which would have made me unhappy, given my well-documented opposition to Major Stars Winning Minor Oscars, but set that aside) I think the outcome of the actual situation is less knowable, as we've not seen what happens when the irresistible force of Winslet-Must-Win-Now comes up against the immovable object of Meryl's-Waited-Too-Long-for-Another.

[dws1982]

If there was strong support for her winning a third Oscar this year methinks Kate would have been relegated to support in The Reader to make the way clear for her.

Yes, I'm sure that this issue was dealt with at the Acting Branch's Annual Pre-Nomination Meeting to Discuss Fairness.

Just saying.