So do the Screen Actors Guild nominations announced today completely reset the Oscar playing field or not? Depends on which L.A. Times columnist you read. Pete Hammond (normally of Maxim) says that the inability of "Atonement" and "Sweeney Todd" to field any SAG nominations means that it's over, buh-bye, no Oscar soup for you. Tom O'Neil in his Gold Derby column says it's not that simple but still finds dark meanings in the fact that the Outstanding Cast category included dark horses like "3:10 to Yuma," "Hairspray," "American Gangster," and "Into the Wild" -- rather than such assumed Oscar frontrunners as "Atonement," "Sweeney Todd," "There Will be Blood," "Michael Clayton," and "Juno."
Lot of noise over misread tea leaves if you ask me. There is no correlation between the SAG's Outstanding Cast category and the Academy's Best Picture. The former looks only at performance, the latter considers the entire production. What do the the five films nominated by the Guild have in common? Deep, deep casts, with one or two big star turns anchored by a number of smaller, pungent players. Of the five presumed Oscar front-runners overlooked by the SAG, only "Michael Clayton" and "Juno" have both the flashy home-run hitters and the deep bench, and as much as I love Ellen Page and Allison Janney, "Juno" is hand-tooled for writers' awards, not actors' laurels. (As for "Clayton," beats me. Maybe Clooney and Swinton and Wilkinson and Pollack just aren't good enough for their peers.)
In any case, actors and pictures equals apples and oranges. My own guess, at this precise moment in time, of what could be the five Best Picture nominees: "No Country for Old Men," "Atonement," "Into The Wild," "American Gangster," and one wild card -- maybe "Clayton," maybe "Juno," maybe even "Hairspray." Not "There Will be Blood," though -- too damn strange (and brilliant). Nor "Sweeney" -- too damn bloody. Understand, of course, that this has nothing to do with what the year's best movies actually are.
By the way, the SAG folk got their WGA waiver, which means the televised awards ceremony can go forward without a picket line. The Globes and the Academy can't say the same. Maybe the SAG awards will be the Oscars this year.
