12/09/2013

Oscars: Round 3 - Golden Globe and SAG Predictions

The Wolf of Wall Street
Well, it’s been a while since we last checked in on the awards race (sorry), so there’s lots of catching up to do. It seemed like there wasn’t much to report on for a while… and then American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street happened. Both films are earning good buzz, even though Wolf is still under embargo, and are popping up in the early critics’ prizes. (I guess my hunch that Wolf of Wall Street would have mostly commercial prospects were silly.) Hustle won the NewYork Critics prizes for Film, Screenplay, and Supporting Actress Jennifer Lawrence, who seems to be getting “Best in Show” notices across the board from critics praising the ensemble cast. Wolf, on the other hand, has popped up in runner-up spots and on a few top ten lists so far. This week should be very interesting, since both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild announce their nominees.

American Hustle
The Golden Globes will play an early round of face offs, since Hustle and Wolf are both late entries in the “Comedy” and Musical category and are drawing considerable likeness and comparison. Drama, on the other hand, offers the first big face-off between 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. Slave has fared well so far with minor critics’ prizes like Boston and two big critical wins: Best Director at New York for Steve McQueen and Best Supporting Actress at LA for Lupita Nyong’o. Gravity topped the LA critics’ prizes in a tie with Spike Jonze’s Her, which will compete against Hustle and Wolf in the comedy category. Her was a surprise winner at the National Board of Review awards, so the Globes will be the first sign whether this quirky comedy has legs beyond critics.

This week’s set of nominations could be really interesting, though, since The Wolf of Wall Street is drawing major Best Picture buzz and similar murmurings for Leonardo DiCaprio, yet it might not be endorsed by the actors. Wolf’s lengthy editing job and post-production is rumoured to have delayed the film so much that, as Kris Tapley reports, SAG voters were not able to see it. The same thing happened last year with DiCaprio’s Django Unchained. Nevertheless, Leo’s co-star Christoph Waltz managed to scoop both the Oscar and the Golden Globe without SAG’s stamp. Wolf’s potential absence in half of this week’s nominations could therefore give a cloudy look at consensus, since the votes from both groups don’t reflect the same viewing opportunities.
(UPDATE: Wolf did indeed screen for SAG's nominating committee, according to Variety.)
Labor Day
The last minute-scramble with Wolf has also had the unfortunate side effect of Paramount virtually discarding Labor Day in the awards race, as they restricted its Christmas Day release to make more room for Wolf and will open it wide in late January. But it’s been wholly absent for a film seemed to have potential, especially for Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, and Jason Reitman in the weak Best Adapted Screenplay race. Paramount’s been doing double-duty with Wolf and their indie gem Nebraska, so their abandonment of Labor Day is good example for how some distributors need to spread their strong dramatic films around the fall season, rather than cram everything into one busy glut from in December. Labor Day could benefit from the upcoming SAG and Golden Globe votes, but word from fellow OFCS members is that they’re “just doing Nebraska and Wolf of Wall Street,” so appearances in these nominations seem unlikely. I'm very disappointed that this film might not get the recognition it deserves.

The other films that could move up or down this week are Blue Jasmine, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Captain Phillips, and August: Osage County. All four are actors’ showpieces and could easily find themselves in a situation where an acknowledgment for a single performance encompasses kudos for a film overall (see: Monster, The Last King of Scotland, or even Lincoln if we’re strictly talking wins). Alternatively, it could be a case where hype for a performance pulls a film into the Best Picture race or helps a film find the attention it deserves (see: The Blind Side for the former, Black Swan for the latter). Cate Blanchett and Blue Jasmine are sitting prettiest, since Cate looks to be the only consensus so far in the scant critical gongs. (She won NY and Boston, and tied in LA with Adèle Exarchopoulos.) The Golden Globes tend to favour Woody Allen, though—they nominated and/or awarded Midnight in Paris; Vicki, Cristina, Barcelona and Match Point in recent years—so Woody can probably count on a few more citations he doesn’t care about.
Lee Daniels` The Butler

As for the other films: Captain Phillips seems to be losing steam badly. (Is it because people finally watched their FYC screeners of A Hijacking and realized it’s so much better?) The Greengrass film seemed with a sure thing across the top categories weeks ago, but Wolf (and to some extent Hustle) probably makes an overlap in tastes. Tom Hanks could easily be squeezed out of the Best Actor race by DiCaprio, as could Forest Whitaker for The Butler. The Butler might have to rely on the Oprah train come Oscar time, but Captain Phillips and The Butler are arguably the biggest “Globes movies” of the Oscar race: namely, they’re mainstream audience fodder with plenty of big stars, which garners the Globes the attention they need to have any merit in the first place. If the Cap’n and the butler don’t appear in either the Best Film or Best Actor line-up, I’d start changing my bets.
August: Osage County
The SAG awards, meanwhile, could offer the biggest boost to August: Osage County. August seemed like a mild favourite for the “Comedy” Golden Globe before Wolf and Hustle revealed themselves not to be dramas, yet it might not net more than an inevitable win for Meryl Streep. The cast of August, on the other hand, could easily fill a single category in the supporting ballots, so it could be a favourite for the top prize of Best Ensemble at the SAGs. One would have to go all the way back to 1996’s The Birdcage to find a SAG winner that wasn’t a Best Picture nominee at the Oscars as well, and given that the film has been screening more favourably in a tightened version than in the original cut that played the festival circuit, it could disprove the folks who wrote it off in September. The same goes for festival hit Prisoners, which could become a dark horse or a lame horse if the actors go for its strong cast.

We’ll have a (somewhat) clearer idea come Wednesday and Thursday. We could just as easily get some big surprises, like last year’s one-two punch of Nicole Kidman’s nominations for The Paperboy, which were pleasant surprises to some. And there’s always the Salmon Fishing in the Yemen or The Tourist oddities to count on: what will be the random choice from the Globes this year?

Without further ado, here are some Golden Globe and SAG predictions, plus a link to updated Oscar picks at the bottom:

Golden Globe Predictions


(An alternate is included since the Globes sometimes have more than five nominees.)


Best Film – Drama:
12 Years a Slave
Blue Jasmine
Captain Philips
Gravity
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Alt: Saving Mr. Banks

Best Film – ‘Comedy’ or Musical
American Hustle
August: Osage County
Enough Said
Nebraska
The Wolf of Wall Street
Alt: Inside Llewyn Davis
Potential Salmon Fishing in the Yemen: Unfinished Song

Best Director
Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Alexander Payne, Nebraska
David O. Russell, American Hustle
Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street
Alt: Woody Allen, Blue Jasmine,

Best Actor – Drama
Robert Redford, All is Lost
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
Forest Whitaker, Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Alt: Idris Elba, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Best Actress – Drama
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Judi Dench, Philomena
Adèle Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Color
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks
Alt: Kate Winslet, Labor Day

Best Actor – ‘Comedy’ or Musical
Christian Bale, American Hustle
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Joaquin Phoenix, Her
Alt: Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight

Best Actress – ‘Comedy’ or Musical
Amy Adams, American Hustle
Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Enough Said
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County
Alt: Sandra Bullock, The Heat

Best Supporting Actor
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
James Gandolfini, Enough Said
Tom Hanks, Saving Mr. Banks
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Alt: Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Supporting Actress
Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
Oprah Winfrey, Lee Daniels The Butler
Alt: Margo Martindale, August: Osage County

Best Screenplay
12 Years a Slave
Blue Jasmine
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street
Alt: American Hustle

Best Animated Film
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Frozen
Monsters University
The Wind Rises
Alt: Ernest et Celestine

Best Foreign Film
Blue is the Warmest Color, France
The Past, Iran
Wadjda, Saudi Arabia
The Hunt, Denmark
The Broken Circle Breakdown, Belgium
Alt: The Great Beauty, Italy

Best Score
12 Years a Slave
The Book Thief
Frozen
Gravity
Saving Mr. Banks
Alt: Rush

Best Song
Frozen, “Let it Go
The Great Gatsby, “Young and Beautiful
Her, “The Moon Song
Lee Daniels’ The Butler, “You and I Ain’t Nothing No More
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, “Ordinary Love
Alt: The Great Gatsby, “Over the Love

SAG Awards


Best Ensemble
12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
August: Osage County
Blue Jasmine
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Alt: Nebraska

Best Actor
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Robert Redford, All is Lost
Alt: Forest Whitaker, Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Judi Dench, Philomena
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks
Alt: Amy Adams, American Hustle

Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
June Squibb, Nebraska
Oprah Winfrey, Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Alt: Octavia Spencer, Fruitvale Station

Best Supporting Actor
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
James Gandolfini, Enough Said
Tom Hanks, Saving Mr. Banks
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Alt: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips


What are your predictions for the Globes and SAG awards?