Why I'm Looking Ahead to SAG

[ITALIANO]

Best Actress is especially interesting I think - by now we all know that Chastain, Lawrence and Riva will be nominated, but the other two spots are really open, and I can only hope that they won't go to Cate-Blanchett-in-The-Golden-Age kinds of filler. I mean, if it HAS to be a filler (and of course nobody getting these last two spots can even vaguely hope to win), I'd prefer one to be for example another foreign-language performance, hopefully a good one (Cotillard would be an acceptable choice), which at least would sort-of make Oscar history and at the same time signal the general blandness of female roles in today's American cinema. Or if not that, something edgy, unusual - but then at the SAG it will probably be somehing like Helen Mirren in Hitchcock or even Keira Knightley in Anna Karenina. And unfortunately it may be so at the Oscars, too.

[Big Magilla]

Sylvia Sims was sight unseen. With so little to do in The Queen she didn't last long.

I don't recall predicting Plowright for Mrs. Palfrey, though she was on my list of shouldabeens. I did predict her and Maggie Smith for Tea With Mussolini along with Sissy Spacek in The Straight Story and Jessica Lange in Titus, none of whom made it in one of the worst years for supporting actresses.

[flipp525]

What have the others been throughout the years? Joan Plowright in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont? Sylvia Syms in The Queen? Oh, Magilla. There always one old lady on your wish-list

[Big Magilla]

Maggie Smith in Quartet is going to be this year's Vanessa Redgrave in Letters to Juliet, right Magilla?

No, but Maggie Smith in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel may be.

[The Original BJ]

Maggie Smith in Quartet is going to be this year's Vanessa Redgrave in Letters to Juliet, right Magilla?

[Big Magilla]

I'm not going to make a full list of predictions, but my no guts-no glory thought is that Meryl Streep gets a SAG nomination for Hope Springs.

I would think even the biggest star-struck Streepers within SAG would think she's won enough for a w hile without nominating her for her dull as dishwater mousey housewife in this thing.

Nominees should be Chastain, Cotillard, Hunt, Lawrence, Mirren and Riva with Knightley, Watts and Maggie Smith (Quartet) the other possibilities.

[The Original BJ]

I'm not going to make a full list of predictions, but my no guts-no glory thought is that Meryl Streep gets a SAG nomination for Hope Springs. Given how arty the Best Actress options are, I feel like there's a decent enough chance for at least one populist entry to make it into the list, and why not her? (Leslie Mann in This is 40 would seem like another possibility, should a non-arthouse candidate nab one of the open spots, though it's hard to know how that film will be received.)

(Truthfully, though, I think Chastain, Lawrence, Mirren, Riva, and Watts would make sense as a lineup, so it's not like they'd have to scrape the barrel for possibilities, but I'm not ruling out the chance that someone from a more commercial entry might pop up.)

Also, it's worth remembering that Beasts of the Southern Wild is ineligible here, so we won't get much of an idea whether the Wallis buzz (and to a lesser extent, Henry's) is mostly a critics thing, or if there's Keisha Castle-Hughes level enthusiasm for the youngster.

[flipp525]

On the female side, it's the opposite situation -- Hathaway, Field and Hunt seem the only safe picks. Imagine if Hunt were being pushed under lead, which many would see as more accurate; we'd truly be scrounging. Is perennial Amy Adams in for another long-shot nod? Could Les Miz get the double candidacy for Barks (and is that likely to carry over to the Oscars)? Where are the alternates? Jennifer Ehle or Jacki Weaver, in apparently smallish roles but in films getting a decent push? Someone, god help us, from the hokey Marigold Hotel? We need guidance, here.

I really hope that Ann Dowd finds her way onto this slate. A working character actress making a critical splash in an independent film seems like just the kind of story the everyman-contingent of SAG voters would want to honor.

Diane Kruger could also be a surprise Demián Bichir style mention for her performance in Farewell, My Queen.

[Greg]

The guild awards appear to be better predictors of the Oscars than the critics awards, probably because there are a fair amount of guild members who are voting members of the Academy while no members of critics organizations are.

[Mister Tee]

We have the Broadcasters tomorrow, trying their best to anticipate the ultimate Oscar nominations, and the Globes turn up Thursday, with their usual assortment of the predictive and the appalling. But what I'll be watching most closely this week is the SAG list on Wednesday. Not that SAG doesn't have its issues as well, but it doesn't have a list of ten in its top category, doesn't split between dramas and comedies, doesn't expand to 6 or 7 to make sure every potential contender is included. While they'll sometimes mislead with a DiCaprio/Hammer posting, or leave out a prime best picture candidate from Ensemble, they'll frequently offer the first sign of something being too out-there for Hollywood (i.e., Michael Fassbender), or let us know someone remains alive despite early season omissions (Glenn Close last year). We can expect some deviations from the ultimate Oscar list, but generally there'll only be 2-3 actors who make it with SAG and miss with the Academy. So, it's our first view of the rough contours of the race.

What I'm especially looking at:

Harvey Weinstein has a long history of getting his films into the Ensemble category -- The Station Agent and Bobby were two notable WTF?'s. This year, he has three contenders with, seemingly, multiple potential nominees -- The Master, Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained . Can two or even three make it under Ensemble? The competition for those ultimate five slots is going to be fierce. Lincoln is a sure thing. I have no doubt Les Miz will make it (those initially tweeted-about NY screenings included theatre-swooning SAG voters; besides, even Nine got the nod here). Both Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, on best picture heat, will be heavily promoted. The Master seems least likely of the Weinstein trio, but I'm interested to see how any of them do, as it might give a hint to their overall seasonal strength.

Can Rachel Weisz actually make a run, or is she a NY one-off? Best actress is not as moribund a field as it appeared a month or so ago, but, beyond Lawrence and Chastain, it's very fluid. Will SAG go the path of least resistance (tossing in Mirren, for example), or take some wild shots? If not Weisz, will one or two of the subtitled ladies (Riva and Cotillard) make the cut?

For that matter, could Tringtignant make his way onto the best actor slate? I have the idea Riva's decent run in the actress category could drag him along to a nomination -- at the Oscars, anyway, but maybe SAG could be an early signal. Best actor is different from best actress in that the field seems set; the problem: it's seven deep. Day-Lewis, Washington, Phoenix, Hawkes, Jackman, Cooper and Trintignant are all in the running. I wouldn't expect SAG to be definitive for the Oscars -- they could easily name Jackman the way they did Gere, while the Academy could leave him out. But certain people could really benefit from SAG citation: Phoenix, Trintignant and maybe especially Hawkes, whose name has been surprisingly absent so far this year. He's of course been brought to life by SAG in the past.

Can SAG make some sense of this best supporting actor race? For a month or so, people have been projecting a field of former Oscar winners/veterans: Alan Arkin, Robert DeNiro, Tommy Lee Jones, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Late releases Zero Dark Thirty and Les Miz have brought genuinely strong notices for Jason Clarke and Eddie Redmayne, respectively. Now we have the legit critics groups, who've bounced all over the place, choosing Matthew McConnaughey, Dwight Henry and Boston's unlikely Ezra Miller. And that's not including the Django crew -- initial tweets seemed to single out Samuel L. Jackson; DiCaprio won at NBR; and Christoph Waltz finished second at most every group that voted this week. Will one of those three become the film's strongest candidate, or will they cannibalize one another? Can SAG give us some signal where all this is going?

On the female side, it's the opposite situation -- Hathaway, Field and Hunt seem the only safe picks. Imagine if Hunt were being pushed under lead, which many would see as more accurate; we'd truly be scrounging. Is perennial Amy Adams in for another long-shot nod? Could Les Miz get the double candidacy for Barks (and is that likely to carry over to the Oscars)? Where are the alternates? Jennifer Ehle or Jacki Weaver, in apparently smallish roles but in films getting a decent push? Someone, god help us, from the hokey Marigold Hotel? We need guidance, here.