In Contention: The Screen Actors Guild Awards

By Josh Spiegel

January 8, 2009

I did not steal Bender's body! I paid for that legally.

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With actors making up the largest guild in Hollywood (and why shouldn't they?), the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards have been a major TV event since 1995. This year's SAG Awards may end up in a shroud of gloom not unlike the Golden Globes press conference/awards ceremony that occurred due to the Writer's Guild strike last year. This January, actors are the ones on the verge of a strike with producers, so things may get a bit awkward, what with the potential of no one showing up. Hey, it worked out for the Globes, didn't it?

Either way, the 2008 SAG nominees have been announced, and it's worth pointing out that their Best Picture nominees aren't actually for the films, but for ensembles - a category called, appropriately enough, Best Ensemble. This year's nominees are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Doubt, Frost/Nixon, Milk, and Slumdog Millionaire."

These nominees hold no surprises. The three films that would appear to be locks for the Best Picture Oscar, Benjamin Button, Milk, and Slumdog Millionaire, are all here. The other two films, adaptations of recent Broadway plays, rely heavily on the skills of their actors, so it makes sense that they would receive recognition from their colleagues; if not, where else? In fact, if Frost/Nixon focused on more than the two titular men, it might have ended up with more nominations, whereas Doubt, with five nods, has the most nominations of all films here, thanks to its four main performances by Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis.




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Over the last ten years, the Screen Actors Guild is six for ten in the Best Ensemble category as compared with Best Picture; over the last five, they're three for five. Though the record is not always perfect, it's worth pointing out that the SAG did award Crash its Best Ensemble award, a film that did surprise some by winning at the Oscars. Of course, looking at the films they've chosen as Best Ensemble, it's clear the films featuring a true mix of performers do win out. Past winners include Little Miss Sunshine, Traffic, and Sideways, movies bolstered not by dominating lead performances but an overall group effort. And VW buses!

Doubt is the film that may end up being helped here, as the SAG may end up supporting it over a film such as The Dark Knight, which ended up with nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Stunt Ensemble, or WALL-E, still a major dark horse contender. If WALL-E doesn't end up at the Oscars, it may be because of actors, who may be even more unwilling to nominate an animated movie without any leads who are...you know, human.

For Best Actor, the nominees are Brad Pitt for Benjamin Button, Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, Sean Penn for Milk, Richard Jenkins for The Visitor, and Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler. As with Best Ensemble, there are three locks here: Langella, Penn, and Rourke. It'd be a big shock if one of those names isn't read out on January 22nd. Pitt's nomination is not as likely, despite Benjamin Button being considered for many other categories, partly because his character isn't flashy or memorable, special effects aside. The only dark horse here, though, is Jenkins. For his understated role in The Visitor, the consummate character actor deserves a chance at the Oscar, but against people like Penn and Langella, working with outsized characters, he may end up forgotten. In the past, the SAG Awards have a slightly better track record than they do with Best Picture, getting eight of ten winners right; of course, one of those was Benicio Del Toro, who won the SAG Award for Best Actor in "Traffic" while getting the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the same role. Still, the likelihood that the winner of the SAG Award wins the Oscar is higher.


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