They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don’t They?
SAG and Globes Upend Wacky Oscar Race
By J. Don Birnam
December 10, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Given everything that has happened, here are our updated power rankings for the major races.
In Best Picture, Spotlight is taking a strong lead.
In Best Director, another Picture/Director split is in the works, with the Mad Max and Carol directors ahead of Spotlight.
In Best Actor, Leo is solidly ahead, but the other spots remain a mystery.
In Best Actress, the spots seem to be congealing, despite SAG’s crazy nominations.
In Best Supporting Actor, Rylance, Stallone, and Elba will battle it out til the end.
And, in Best Supporting Actress, category confusion is wreaking the most havoc.
SAG: Irreverent or Irrelevant?
SAG Nominations for Best Ensemble in a Motion Picture:
Beasts of No Nation
The Big Short
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton
Trumbo
If you follow me on Twitter, you saw the chaos as it developed. We should have known something was up when Michael Shannon made it into the supporting category, whereas the Spotlight men were nowhere to be found. Then, Rachel McAdams got into supporting for Spotlight, along with Helen Mirren, for Trumbo. That was just bizarre. But it didn’t stop there. Sarah Silverman got in to lead actress for I Smile Back, and Dame Helen found another nomination for The Weinstein Company’s Woman in Gold. At that point, Bryan Cranston’s lead actor nomination was almost an afterthought.
But the Screen Actors Guild saved the best for last. Their best ensemble nominations, listed above, were completely out of left field. The Internet had an immediate meltdown (no one likes unpredictability), although I for one welcome some of their choices. Unsurprisingly, I failed, with an F, my SAG predictions exam, getting only Spotlight right, and missing every other nominee, including my prediction of a Creed upset. It went nowhere.
In any case, I think, all five of the nominated movies are deserving, and there's nothing wrong with branching out. On the other hand, some of the acting choices are truly bizarre. As much as I love McAdams, to include her but not Ruffalo and/or Keaton for Spotlight is confusing, and it does make one wonder if the movie has the Ensemble prize sewn up or if it's going to lose to The Big Short. And as much as I love Dame Helen, her Woman in Gold performance was not as showy as Jennifer Lawrence’s in Joy.
It was also great that they gave Netflix’s bid at upending the awards race forever a shot in the arm by giving two nods to Beasts of No Nation, including Best Ensemble. But, if they liked it so much, why not recognize the lead, Abraham Atta? On the other hand, it is a shame that a solid movie like Creed could not make it in, and one wonders if this imperils Stallone’s supporting actor bid.
The most stunning story of all, however, is the complete lack of any nominations for The Martian. Or is it? Is the Martian a real Oscar thing, or is it something that bloggers and pundits have been trying to will into existence? Other than citations from the populist NBR, The Martian has not done well at all with critics, who have yielded, understandably, to the much craftier Mad Max. That movie did not do well with SAG, but The Martian’s exclusion altogether should be a wakeup call.
Finally, one has to mention the nominations for The Big Short, certainly an actors’ showcase, over the shutout of Joy, which did not even land Lawrence a nod. Heck, even the maligned Steve Jobs and The Danish Girl survived with acting nods that will certainly help.
In the end, it is fair to wonder whether SAG had a fluke year, made worse by their impossibly early deadlines and arcane nominations rules. They barely saw The Hateful Eight, which explains its complete lack of nominations. But this has happened to movies like American Sniper, Wolf of Wall Street and Django Unchained, all of which made it safely into the Best Picture category. If SAG cares about their relevance as awards bellwethers (and, trust me, they do) they may have to rethink some of their procedures, no matter how much, as an Oscars’ pundit, I welcome the novelty they provided this year. Conversely, studios need to start paying attention: late releases will not do well with SAG or the Globes (see below), and, while they can still get in to Oscar, that lack of visibility never helps.
The thing is, most of it is going to be irrelevant in two months. By the time they present their awards on January 30th and are reading Sarah Silverman’s name from the list of nominees, no one will have uttered her role in the context of awards again.
SAG Big Winners: Trumbo, The Big Short, Beasts of No Nation.
SAG Big Losers: The Martian, Joy, Creed, The Hateful Eight.
SAG Early Picks: Spotlight, Leo, Brie Larson, Idris Elba, Rooney Mara.
Golden Globes: Enough Space to Spread the Love
As with SAG, Carol did very well here, leading with a total of 5 nominations (despite its bizarre lack of Screenplay nod for Phyllis Nagy. But the SAG giveth and the HFPA taketh away. Although Beasts of No Nation did well with the actors, it was stopped dead in its tracks at the Globes, failing to receive anything other than the now-expected Idris Elba nomination. Here are the nominees:
Golden Globes for Motion Picture Drama:
Carol
Spotlight
The Revenant
Room
Mad Max
SAG Nominations for Best Ensemble in a Motion Picture:
Joy
The Martian
The Big Short
Trainwreck
Spy
With ten slots for actors and movies, of course, the Globes can spread the love. Still, they can revive fledgling candidacies. I was surprised to see The Revenant show up in Drama, Director, and Actor. Leo is not only the prohibitive front-runner to finally win an Oscar, it is clear the HFPA was doing a little bit of catch-up with the Academy after they relegated Birdman to a single award last year. Meanwhile, The Big Short continued its last minute surge, with its SAG and Globes nodes making it a serious threat for Best Picture.
Spotlight got the expected Director, Picture, and Screenplay nods, but the lack of any acting nominations from both here and SAG (okay, it got McAdams), has to start worrying the people behind it. Its Best Picture status seems imperiled.
The best and happiest surprise of the Globes was that they did not fall for category fraud and gave both Alicia Vikander and Rooney Mara lead nominations for their performances in The Danish Girl and Carol. Of course, they can do that, because they have more nods to play with, but that makes both female acting races fascinatingly interesting at the Oscars. Sadly, that displaced Charlotte Rampling from the Golden Globes line-up, which could happen at the Oscars.
So the two female acting races will be the hardest to predict this year. If Mara and Vikander do move to lead, that squeezes out Rampling and maybe Lawrence, but it also gives space for other contenders in Supporting, like Helen Mirren for Trumbo (she got in at Globes as well), and Kristen Stewart, despite her miss with HFPA.
Despite all the space, however, there is one snub to be mentioned: Johnny Depp did not get in for lead actor. That has to hurt on the heels of the SAG nod, and Will Smith’s inclusion for Concussion clearly leaves those last few slots wide open at the Oscars. Meanwhile, Cranston got in again, sealing his fate as a serious Best Actor contender after the double SAG+Globes nods.
Finally, the Fox people must have breathed a sigh of relief to get some life back into The Martian. Damon made it in, the movie made it into the Comedy category, and Ridley Scott received a nomination for Best Director. On the other side of the ledger, Brooklyn took another serious hit, along with The Danish Girl. This kind of stylized, international picture is right up the HFPA’s normal wheelhouse, and their failure to get in does not bode well for their future either.
As I said last time, the Globes can actually be the kiss of death for the Oscar. Too often they try to go with what they think the industry is going to do, but as the first major group to give out awards (before all the major guilds), they are often ahead of the curve, or too late to notice the momentum shifts. This year, they are announcing their winners before the Oscars even announce their nominations! So the predictive value of the Globes will be further imperiled.
Golden Globe Big Winners: Room, The Big Short, The Revenant, The Martian, Steve Jobs
Golden Globe Big Losers: Brooklyn, The Danish Girl
Golden Globe Early Picks: Spotlight and The Big Short for movies, Carol for Director, Leo and Matt Damon for lead actors, Larson and Lawrence for lead actresses, and Rylance and Kate Winslet for supporting
The Road Ahead
Hey, remember the critics? Lost in the hoopla of this week’s exciting announcements is that the critical awards will continue. The third big critics group, the L.A. Critics, did speak last Sunday. I have to brag a little and say that I almost exactly nailed the predictions for what this group would do when I posted them a couple of weeks back. As I expected, they went for Spotlight in Picture, although surprisingly for George Miller’s directing of Mad Max. They also fell for Fassbender in Steve Jobs, and Mark Rylance was their runner-up in supporting (I had him winning), losing, somewhat surprisingly, to Michael Shannon in 99 Homes (who has had a phenomenal week and is now locked in). In the female categories, they went for Saoirse Ronan (she’s gaining heat), which I did not see coming - I had them going for Vikander, which they did do, in Supporting.
Other critics also spoke, including the D.C. and Boston critics. Boston liked Spotlight for Picture and Todd Haynes for directing Carol (Todd McCarthy, Spotlight’s director, has not received a major critics’ citation). They also gave accolades to Leo and Charlotte Rampling, along with Mark Rylance and Kristen Stewart. Those four seem to have a nomination almost sewn up.
So, that is it for major nominations announcement until 2016, when the major guilds will begin speaking. Their timing should make them a bit less schizophrenic than SAG. In the meantime, we should hear from a lot of the other major cities’ critical groups, but those tend to fall in line with the consensuses you see from the first few ones. Except a lot of Spotlight in Picture, Haynes/Miller in Director, Leo in acting, etc.
Next week: With this wacky, unpredictable Oscar race, is this the year we will finally get 10 nominees?