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For Best Actress, the nominees are Angelina Jolie for Changeling, Meryl Streep for Doubt, Melissa Leo for Frozen River, Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married, and Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road. This year, there are far fewer locks in the Best Actress category than others, so it's a mixed bag with the nominees. Seeing Jolie in a modestly successful movie and Leo - in a film that...let's be honest, isn't widely known - pop up aren't big surprises, but it also wouldn't be surprising to not see them nominated for Oscars, in place of someone more surprising, such as Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky or Cate Blanchett for Benjamin Button. The SAGs have, in the past, been right more than wrong, getting seven of the past ten winners right, and four of the last five. Also, all ten SAG winners have been nominated for the Academy Award. Much more so than a Best Picture Oscar, the SAGs are - no surprise - usually good at predicting acting awards.

Such may not be the case in the Best Supporting Actor SAG Award. The nominees are Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt, Josh Brolin for Milk, Dev Patel for Slumdog Millionaire, and Robert Downey, Jr. for Tropic Thunder. In the past ten years, only four SAG winners have been Oscar winners, though all ended up with an Oscar nomination. In 2000, the year Del Toro won Supporting Actor at the Oscars, Albert Finney won the SAG for Erin Brockovich. This year's nominees feature some locks, such as Ledger, Hoffman, and, yes, Downey, Jr. For Brolin, the potential stopping point is his co-star in Milk, James Franco, who is equally deserving of a nomination for his role. For Patel, the problem is recognition among the Academy members. Though he stars in one of the Oscar frontrunners, Patel is not well enough known in the States. Someone like Michael Shannon, being praised for his small role in Revolutionary Road, could end up sneaking in that fifth slot.

For Best Supporting Actress, the SAG nominees are Taraji P. Henson for Benjamin Button, Amy Adams for Doubt, Viola Davis for Doubt, Kate Winslet (there she is again!) for The Reader, and Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. These nominees aren't completely certain yet, either, with Marisa Tomei and Rosemarie Dewitt, for The Wrestler and Rachel Getting Married, respectively, hoping to jump in for someone like Adams or even Winslet to get on the Oscar bandwagon. SAG history shows here that they're less likely to give the right award to supporting actors as opposed to the leads. Over the past ten years, they've gotten six of ten winners correct, though they've gotten four of the past five winners correct. All were Oscar nominees; the most recent mistake was Ruby Dee in American Gangster, who won the SAG but lost the Oscar to Tilda Swinton.

As with all guilds, it's hard to tell how the SAGs will side on January 25th with their choices, but those who win will likely find themselves nominated for Oscars. Whether they'll win is, as always, up to the fickle Academy members.

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