SAG Predictions

Time to predict the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which take place tomorrow night, and are finally the first award voted on by actual industry voters. Not the Hollywood Foreign Press, not the critics, but an actual voting group that can really tell us something about what a voting body with some overlap with the Academy prefers. The guild awards are where we can really see what's out in front (and finally see 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle go head to head without them having an excuse to split categories and reward one in comedy). SAG can often be the least important precursor, since the Ensemble prize doesn't necessarily translate to Best Picture, but occasionally they do use it as their Best Picture bellwether (for example, both Slumdog Millionaire and Argo won here unexpectedly, which signaled extremely heavy support for those movies in Best Picture).

Male Actor in a Leading Role

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  • Bruce Dern, Nebraska
  • Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
  • Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
  • Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
  • Forest Whitaker, The Butler

Since Leo DiCaprio isn't even nominated here, whoever wins this award probably keeps the race wide open going ahead, unless it's McConaughey, who will officially become the frontrunner if he takes it. And I do think he's likely to, as a popular actor who's never won before, although SAG does have a history of supporting veteran actors, so Bruce Dern can win. And I also think Ejiofor stands a good chance, as a place to reward 12 Years. But my instinct says it's McConaughey, who will then vault into first place for the Oscar as well. 

Female Actor in a Leading Role

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  • Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
  • Sandra Bullock, Gravity
  • Judi Dench, Philomena
  • Meryl Streep, August: Osage County
  • Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks

Cate Blanchett has this in the bag. Amy Adams was not nominated here, so her only real competition at the Oscars hasn't come yet. Sandra Bullock has an outside chance, since SAG is such a broad, mainstream group, but yeah- this is Cate's to lose.

Male Actor in a Supporting Role

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  • Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
  • Daniel Bruhl, Rush
  • Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
  • James Gandolfini, Enough Said
  • Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Jared Leto, although James Gandolfini has a major chance to upset with a posthumous win. SAG being such a broad group comprised of a lot of TV actors give him that edge, actually. In fact, I think this race could be closer than some might think, since Leto is a bit of an outsider himself, and Gandolfini has won 5 SAG awards. The safe bet is Leto, but watch out for an upset here (which wouldn't mean anything for the Oscar, of course).

Female Actor in a Supporting Role

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  • Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
  • Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
  • Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
  • June Squibb, Nebraska
  • Oprah Winfrey, The Butler

Again, the broadness of the voting group tells me these guys will go for Jennifer Lawrence over newcomer Nyong'o, but Oprah might stand a chance here too. And it is rare to repeat at SAG (not on the TV side, but on the movie side).  I'm really wavering over this one, but I think I'm going to pick Lupita and say this is where they reward 12 Years a Slave. But admittedly, this is more of a risky call

Cast in a Motion Picture

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  • 12 Years a Slave
  • American Hustle
  • August: Osage County
  • Dallas Buyers Club
  • Lee Daniels' The Butler

Ok, so American Hustle has won every ensemble critics prize there is, it makes sense that they'd win here. In fact, if anything else does win, that would tells us something very significant about where Best Picture's headed. For example, if 12 Years a Slave pulls this out, that means they have a LOT of support within the industry and in that case I'd think it's on its way to winning Best Picture for sure. If it's Hustle, as expected, the status quo remains the same, and the PGA award on Sunday is going to tell us who the true frontrunner is, as they have for the last five consecutive years. If it's anything else, that would just tell us that American Hustle might be weaker in the Best Picture race than we think, but 12 Years a Slave isn't as strong either. But American Hustle is the safe choice.

Critics Choice Award Winners

The Broadcast Film Critics chose 12 Years a Slave tonight, but rewarded quite a few other movies as well, since they split a few categories into comedy this year, like the Golden Globes:

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  • Best Action Movie: Lone Survivor
  • Best Original Screenplay: Her
  • Best Actor in a Comedy: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
  • Best Actress in a Comedy: Amy Adams, American Hustle
  • Best Comedy: American Hustle
  • Best Actor in an Action Movie: Mark Wahlberg, Lone Survivor
  • Best Actress in an Action Movie: Sandra Bullock, Gravity
  • Best Ensemble: American Hustle
  • Best Foreign Language Film: Blue is the Warmest Color
  • Best Animated Film: Frozen
  • Best Documentary: 20 Feet From Stardom
  • Best Young Actor/Actress: Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Color
  • Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
  • Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
  • Best Score: Gravity
  • Best Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Song: "Let it Go," Frozen
  • Best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie: Gravity
  • Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
  • Best Art Direction: The Great Gatsby
  • Best Costumes: The Great Gatsby
  • Best Hair & Makeup: American Hustle
  • Best Visual Effects: Gravity
  • Best Cinematography: Gravity
  • Best Film Editing: Gravity
  • Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
  • Best Film: 12 Years a Slave

Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations

Expected: 

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  • American Hustle and Gravity lead the pack, nominated for ten each, while 12 Years a Slave is right behind them with 9 (it slightly underperformed by missing a cinematography nod, but landed all the key nominations needed to win Picture). This is clearly a three way race for the top prize. 
  • Cate Blanchett remains the frontrunner in Actress, but since Amy Adams made the cut, I think she can seriously give her a run for her money, because she's now the only non-winner in that category. 
  • Actor is wide open, but I'm thinking it's between Leo and McConaughey for the win, with Ejiofor a spoiler.

Snubs:

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  • Tom Hanks and Paul Greengrass out for Actor and Director, replaced by Christian Bale and Alexander Payne, while Barkhad Abdi still gets in for Captain Phillips. Booo. Captain Phillips deserved those nominations, both Hanks and Greengrass did incredible jobs. 
  • Emma Thompson out for Amy Adams and not Meryl Streep (she can still get nominated for apparently anything). 
  • That cinematography miss for 12 Years. What were they thinking? Sean Bobbit had some of the most amazing shots of the year, next to only Gravity.
  • Saving Mr. Banks only gets a single nomination for Score. Not so upset about that one. 
  • Hyped documentaries Stories We Tell and Blackfish not nominated for Best Documentary.
  • Pacific Rim snubbed in Visual Effects.

Surprises: 

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  • American Hustle becomes David O. Russell's second movie in a row to land all four acting nods, which is a truly impressive feat. He's now directed his actors to 11 Oscar nominations in his last three movies.
  • Dallas Buyers Club way over performs by getting into makeup, screenplay, picture and editing, which tells us it may have been a top five nominee.
  • Jonah Hill gets into supporting actor despite no other precursors!
  • The entire makeup category, which nominated Jackass and The Lone Ranger (also nominated in visual effects). I mean, seriously?
  • That song, "Alone, Yet Not Alone," from a movie no one on this planet has ever heard of. It's a very, very suspicious nomination, because the co-composer of this thing is apparently an Academy governor and former chief of the music branch. After last year's debacle resulting in only two nominees from some really worthy candidates, this is just more evidence that the Academy needs to burn down this entire branch and rebuild it from the ground up. It's ridiculous and the most embarrassing nominee of the morning.
  • I predicted all nine nominees for Best Picture this year! (That's the first time that's ever happened).

Final Oscar Nomination Predictions: Best Director & Best Picture

Best Director

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  • Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
  • Paul Greengrass, Captain Phillips
  • Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
  • David O. Russell, American Hustle
  • Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

You know, it's probably not a good idea to go with the exact same five DGA nominees, because the Oscar lineup here is almost always 3/5 or 4//5 with DGA. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out who to leave out in this category.  Cuaron, McQueen and Russell are locked. The other two are shakier, but Captain Phillips has been one of the absolute strongest contenders in every single guild, plus BAFTA, and the director's branch likes Greengrass, having given him a lone director nomination once before, for United 93. And Scorsese? Well, he's Scorsese. Yes, the movie was bold, brash, and probably turned off a lot of Academy voters, but again, they admire that kind of vision in the directors branch and often reward bold turns. Spike Jonze would be the most likely alternate here, and he could replace either of those two I suppose. Other longshots might be the Coens or Alexander Payne. But, I think I'm just going to stick with the DGA five- I wouldn't be surprised if Jonze got in though.

Best Picture

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  • 12 Years a Slave
  • American Hustle
  • Captain Phillips
  • Dallas Buyers Club*
  • Gravity
  • Her*
  • Nebraska
  • Philomena*
  • The Wolf of Wall Street

Ok, here we go. In Best Picture, I really feel that five movies are guaranteed, and if we still had just five nominees there's no doubt they'd be the contenders. Those are 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Captain Phillips, American Hustle and Nebraska. As we get down to 9, it's tougher, but I think Wolf of Wall Street showed enough strength in the guilds and has enough passion to get in (even if some people hate it, passion matters more, because to get into Best Picture under this new system, what you need more than anything is #1 votes. If a movie is loved by some and hated by others, it will probably get in thanks to those people who loved it and put at #1 on their ballot). 

In seventh, I think it's probably Dallas Buyers Club, which surprisingly had a very strong guild showing, which means industry voters loved that movie too. And then it gets rough for those last two slots. Under the preferential ballot system, it's nearly mathematically impossible to get to ten, so for the last two years we've had nine nominees- I'm just assuming that's going to happen again. Saving Mr. Banks did fairly well in guild nominations and that's a very Oscar-baity, nice, corporate friendly movie that plays well with old people, but then again so is Philomena- it's kind of a tossup there, but I'm guessing Philomena...and for the last slot I'm going to go with Her. This was a movie beloved by critics and did place in PGA- it seems like a film that has a lot of passion behind it, although I still wonder if that passion is mostly with actual critics and not necessarily voters. But I'm going to say it makes it anyway. 

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The other movies with an equal chance of getting into one of those last three slots are probably Blue Jasmine and Inside Llewyn Davis. I hung onto Llewyn Davis for quite a while because there IS a significant and historical precedent for Coen Brothers films making it into Best Picture (even A Serious Man did it a few years ago) but this one was so completely rejected by all the guilds that I just don't see it sneaking in any more. It'd have to be on passion alone, which is possible, but I'm placing my money on Her instead.

Final Oscar Predictions: Lead Actor & Actress

Best Actor

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  • Bruce Dern, Nebraska
  • Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street*
  • Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
  • Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
  • Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

Toughest category of all. I think these are the guys who will make it in though. Leo is the wild card, but the hype and buzz surrounding Wolf was so loud in the window of the voting period, and there is a lot of passion and admiration for the performance in certain circles, so I do think he edges out Robert Redford, who was not nominated at SAG or BAFTA. He could honestly still make it in on respect, but I'm going to predict Leo gets it. And the rest of the guys I think are safe, but if they really, really loved American Hustle, Christian Bale could sneak in here somewhere (he was nominated at every other major precursor), I just don't know who he'd replace. It's even possible that he's the one who takes Redford's slot and not Leo. Or he could knock out any one of the other five. It's the most competitive category by far.

Best Actress

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  • Amy Adams, American Hustle*
  • Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
  • Sandra Bullock, Gravity
  • Judi Dench, Philomena
  • Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks

Basically the one call I'm making here is to say Amy Adams will push out Meryl Streep. It's a risky call to make, but I think the American Hustle love peaked at the right time and will carry her through. The rest are safe, maybe Emma Thompson was a bit vulnerable, but I doubt it. This is probably the lineup.