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Onto the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, which were also announced this week. Of course, since the guild is made up of only...well, actors. The only awards they nominate are all acting. Instead of Best Picture, their big award is Best Ensemble; this year's nominees are An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Nine, and Precious. The notable miss here is Up in the Air, which has found luck in other awards as of late. However, seeing as George Clooney, Anna Kendrick, and Vera Farmiga, the film's three main actors, all got nominated in their respective categories (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress), there's little to worry about here. Other notable nominees include Helen Mirren in The Last Station, for Best Actress; Christopher Plummer in The Last Station, for Best Supporting Actor; and Diane Kruger in Inglourious Basterds, for Best Supporting Actress.

That last nomination is most notable, if only because the only other actor being highlighted from Quentin Tarantino's recent World War II film is Christoph Waltz, as Hans Landa. Waltz did get nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but Kruger's nomination is the kind of surprise that the SAGs are known for that probably won't repeat at the Oscars. Recent surprise nominees include Dev Patel for Slumdog Millionaire, the 2006 film Bobby for Best Ensemble, and 3:10 to Yuma for Best Ensemble. Kruger's performance is certainly entertaining, and she's most definitely a supporting role. But how likely is it that we'll see her get an Oscar nod? It would be as surprising, if not more so. This kind of incongruity, despite actors making up almost one-fifth of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is what makes the SAGs stand out as not the most solid predictor of Best Picture gold.

In the past ten years, the SAGs have correctly predicted six Best Picture winners. Though they missed the 2006 winner, The Departed, and the 2004 winner, Million Dollar Baby, in place of Little Miss Sunshine and Sideways, the Screen Actors Guild did predict correctly that Crash would win Best Picture at the Oscars. What's more important, as evidenced by the two examples in the previous paragraph, is that the Screen Actors Guild doesn't always nominate the same five films that AMPAS does. Granted, with the field of Best Picture nominees being ten this year, it's likely that all five of this year's Best Ensemble nominees will repeat at the Oscars. Still, with movies such as Up, which didn't get nominated at the SAGs (and its exclusion is not at all surprising, nor is that of Avatar), likely showing up at the Oscars, it's harder than ever to see any connection.

The American Film Institute is well-known for its famous top 100 lists of the best American movies of all time. However, in the past decade, the AFI has also become better-known for its year-end awards. Each year, they name ten movies as the best of their year. This year's list of AFI's top ten movies is as follows: Coraline, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, Precious, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Sugar, Up, and Up in the Air. I would imagine you've all done a double-take or two from this list. Coraline? The Hangover? Some of you may be wondering, and rightly so because of how quickly it vanished from theaters, what the hell Sugar is. This year, more than in recent past, the AFI has gone for the unique choices as opposed to something ordinary.

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