Silver Live-Blogging SAG Playbook (The Show!)
Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 8:00PM 
8:00 The announcer just said Zero Dark Thirty Jessica Chastain is "Zero Dark Flirty". Regret to inform that his was not even the worst pun of the intro. This was not even in the bottom ten of worst puns. Yikes. "Argo Seat Yourself"??? (And you don't even want to know how much television pays writers for this sort of thing. Can I apply?)
8:02 I Am An Actor from Jane Krakowski, Chris Tucker, Helen Hunt, Hal Holbrook, Sofia Vergara. Followed by Nicole Kidman with some hot razor cut flat iron hair to announce...
8:06 SUPPORTING ACTOR. I predicted Tommy Lee Jones because of the huge audience response he gets in Lincoln. But perhaps I'm too stuck back in November and the TLJ hoopla has ended. The award goes to... oh, wow. Tommy Lee Jones. Who is not there. His absence does him no favors in a possibly very tight Oscar race.
8:08 Bradley Cooper, whose hair is unusually light brown fluffy. (I'm reminded of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie ...as both Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels) and Jennifer Lawrence introduce their own movie. They use a clip of the "silver lining" monologue over images of the cast.
8:10 SUPPORTING ACTRESS. Justin Timberlake arrives in his 'suit and tie shit, suit and tie shit ♫' (plaid pattern potpourri but quite fetching)... and tries to do a little dance to the piped in canned show music [more after the jump]
BFFs Naomi & NicI predicted Anne Hathaway. Nicole Kidman's clip is fun but super brief and Naomi Watts woots beside her supportively.
And the "Best Supporting Friend of an Actress Who is Also An Actress!" Goes to Naomi Watts who is nominated for The Impossible. Unexpectly Naomi Watts totally emerges as Queen of Reaction Shots for tonight's event, the camera regular returning to her.
Love this gif tweets from last night from Dave Itzkoff
Anne wins. Nice shout out to the usual people and then The Dark Knight Rises cast? Nice throughline there about taking what you learned from one job into each of the next ones.
8:12 A commercial for Quartet. The Boyfriend laughs "I love that the selling line of that movie is [Throws arms out in pointing gesture] 'MAGGIE SMITH...!' Well, can you blame them? How else to sell it.
8:20 ACTOR IN COMEDY SERIES. Kerry Washington and Jeff Daniels are here to thank the Armed Forces around the world before announcing. And then Alec Baldwin wins his 8th statue! SAG don't believe in spreading no wealth. Everyone in the audience toasts to 30 Rock finally being over so that someone else can win this prize.
8:28 ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES, announced by Julianne Moore and Damian Lewis (ginger power), give the award to a brunette Tina Fey who seems genuinely shaken and appreciative. To Amy Poehler:
My sweet friend Amy, I've known you since you were pregnant with Lena Dunham."
LOL.
8:30 ENSEMBLE IN A COMEDY SERIES. Are there 10 nominees? This clip reel is lasting forever and is strangely unfunny despite a lot of funny shows in the mix. MODERN FAMILY wins a third time. This show has been spectularly boring to live blog about - I apologize!. All the same winners as usual. Nobody who loves TV seems to be fickle in the slightest. Why is that? Does the habitual nature of television make us complacent to the ebbs and flows of quality within even our most darling darlings? If you don't win one of these prizes in your first season you almost never do. But if you win at the beginning you can keep on winning each year.
8:41 ACTRESS IN A TV MOVIE presented by Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, goes to Julianne Moore for "Game Change".
The omnisicent TV god narrator remind us that she's been nominated ten times but this is her first win. It's true. Sometimes all it takes is biopic mimicry. (sigh). Not that she wasn't brilliant in the role.
8:45 ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE presented by James Marsden and Rose Byrne wearing something that I cannot possibly describe but which is not awesome. She looks terrified. For Clive Owen's Hemingway & Gelhorn clip they chose a shirt tearing moment where he points to his man fur "this is what a man looks like" Well, don't stop there, Clive. Show don't tell! Kevin Costner wins and is not there. Bradley Cooper looks super bored in a reaction shot. Is it because they have to wait until the end of the show for Silver Linings love or are the drinks not as copious as at the Globes?
8:47 SAG-AFTRA MOMENT. They united two unions. They celebrate.
8:55 Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway come to the stage to show the Les Miz clip (basically the first trailer) while joking about Gladiator chasing Wolverine who adopts Catwoman's child who grows up to star in Mamma Mia! Even corporate Hollywood has adopted the interwebs movie mashup snark ways.
9:00 DICK VAN DYKE TRIBUTE. I am a huge Mary Popppins Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fan so I approve. Here's Naomi and Nicole watching him. Nicole smiled right after this at something he said but I missed it with my phone, so she looks very very serious.
Speaking of DRAMATIC SERIOUSNESS...
9:15 OUTSTANDING MALE ACTOR DRAMA SERIES. The birth mother of Lena Dunham and David Burtka's husband introduce these clips with a series of nonsensical words said dramatically. Bryan Cranston wins his first "actor" for Breaking Bad which is weird because SAG usually names the same winners as Emmy.
9:22 OUTSTANDING ACTRESS IN DRAMA SERIES. Can I just say that I think Michelle Dockery is OUTSTANDING on Downton Abbey. I don't think she gets enough credit. There's a lot just under the surface of all that glacial poshness. And the actor goes to... Claire Danes.
Every time Julianna Marguiles loses anything I look at her husband and think "she won!"
9:27 Jessica Chastain is appropriately sober for In Memoriam. So sad. CELESTE HOLM. God, what an actor she was. Other people that grabbed by attention: Charles Durning doing a little sidestep, Susan Tyrell (looking a little Burstyn-esque in her clip...what movie is that?), Nicol Williamson in an Excalibur clip (*sniffle*), Andy Griffith, Lupe Ontiveros, Larry Hagman. Chased with a commercial for the new season of DALLAS with Larry Hagman. Ummm... awkward.
9:33 These commercials for Silver Linings Playbook make it look like such a better movie than it is. Well done, marketing brainwashers.
9:35 Sigourney Weaver and Alfred Molina introduce BEST ENSEMBLE DRAMA SERIES which goes to... "shut the French doors", DOWNTON ABBEY.
I'm guessing Ben Affleck doesn't watch Downton Abbey
I don't think Ben Affleck knows who they are... just that they're swinging by his chair.
The help on Downton Abbey cleans up nice. They are genuinely shocked to win in the country of Homeland and there are only like five of them that crossed the ocean for the event.
9:40 Cute putting on glasses intro with Sally Field and Daniel Day-Lewis to introduce Lincoln's clip. Mrs and Mrs Abraham Mary Todd Lincoln. Such an unlikely actorly pair but a good one.
9:41 Robert DeNiro introduces BEST ACTRESS. Jennifer Lawrence wins.
Has a lot of trouble with her dress catching on things -- it actually looks like it comes apart at one point, what the what? -- but the acceptance speech is beautiful. She repositions Silver Linings Playbook as some noble effort towards understanding mental illness. (Savvy if it a bit disingenuous, that shell game). Jessica Chastain seems to take it in stride and Lawrence correctly points out that that movie wouldn't be the same without Bradley Cooper. He really is best in show.
Kris Tapley tweeted this:
Congrats to Jennifer Lawrence for not having to face Emmanuelle Riva tonight.
— Kristopher Tapley (@kristapley) January 28, 2013
And trust that I'd love to believe that Emmanuelle Riva was the one taking home the gold on Oscar night. But I think SAG will prove prophetic here. There's nothing Oscar loves more than a Princess story as actresses go.
9:51 "Ladies and gentleman, VIOLA DAVIS". Remember that awesome awesome awesome speech she gave when she won last year? Good times. She's presenting BEST ACTOR. Spoiler Alert on Denzel Washington's Flight clip! The Actor goes to... DANIEL DAY-LEWIS. Brief Mandatory Standing Ovation since he's DDL.
9:55 DDL's speech name checks Joaquin Phoenix, Liam Neeson and Leonardo DiCaprio though I'm not sure I follow why all three of them are named. He's vague about the latter two but Phoenix is only a shoutout since he wasn't nominated (and should have been). There's a fun -is it okay to call it that?- twist to the speech in which he remembers that an actor killed Lincoln and then points out that other actors periodically try to bring him back to life. I think he ought to have saved that for the Oscar speech.
9:58 Jude Law (who was excellent in the non-nominated Anna Karenina) gets the honor of announcing OUTSTANDING CAST IN A MOTION PICTURE. Lincoln has one two prizes, Les Miz one, Silver Linings Playbook one but I predicted Silver Linings. But it's the cast of Argo that wins. There's your Oscar for Best Picture. No stopping it now. Ben Affleck accepts but honestly, I think it should have been one of the supporting players since choosing which cast member speaks is always a fun tradition and audience surprise when it comes to the Best Ensemble.
I can't believe i'm standing in the place where Daniel Day-Lewis won. Maybe I'll be a better actor just from the radiation."
Affleck shouts out to the Farsi speaking cast members though you'll notice that none of them are on stage (Update: Maybe Sheila Vand is there, Nick points out in the comments though she won't receive a statue for her work). They weren't nominated due to SAG's entirely problematic best ensemble cast rules that I'm always bitching about. I'll bitch about it as a mostly lone soldier till other journalists and bloggers take up the war to recognize supporting players and not just stars who have good enough agents to get them solo title cards.
10:01 Good night! Now it's time to catch up on the Outstanding Cast of Downton Abbey. Their latest episode was airing concurrently to this show.
- Are you pleased with the winner's results?
- Who do you think should have given the Argo speech?
- Will all four acting winners (Daniel, Jennifer, Anne, and Tommy) advance on to Oscar? I think so but perhaps you feel differently?
Reader Comments (111)
rami - Yes, DDL "disappears" into the role of Lincoln. Just as he disappeared into his roles in There Will Be Blood, and My Left Foot, and In The Name of the Father, and just about every other performance the man has ever given. He's already been deservedly awarded twice in Best Actor, and three of his fellow Oscar nominees affected me more (I also think they reached deeper and found more resonant truths in their performances, but they were also given bigger arcs to work with). But my biggest issue is that any other method actor would have given the same performance that DDL gave in Lincoln. Nothing in it stood out to me as something that was uniquely HIS. Yes it's a great performance, but not only is it the kind of performance I've come to expect from DDL, but it's a performance I would expect from any other method actor. I don't see why it needs to be SO dominant this year.
I need to correct myself. I'm not the English. DiCaprio wasn't in talks to play Lincoln. Neeson was though. This is from AwardsDaily. It was DiCaprio who convinced Daniel Day-Lewis to be Lincoln. "GONY" bros 4 life! :) :)
OPRAH: Okay, would you have done this without Daniel Day-Lewis?
STEVEN: For a time I was going do it with Liam Neeson. But then, you know, we just decided to move in two different directions. I was sitting around at home one day realizing I'm never going to make "Lincoln." It's just never going to happen. And Leo DiCaprio came over for dinner that night; it was just my wife and Leo and myself. We were sitting around and Leo said, "What's happening with Lincoln? You've been, what, five years on this thing?" And I said, "Longer." I told Leo the whole story, and I told him I had tried to approach Daniel on another screenplay and I wasn't able to re-approach Daniel. And the next day, my assistant said "Leo's on the phone." He said, "You got a pencil? Write this down. This is Daniel Day-Lewis's cell phone. He's expecting your call." Leo had gone to bat for me and had called Daniel on the telephone and got Daniel and I together. Everything at that point started really moving quickly.
Amanda -- but isn't this often the case? and will people in, say, the cinematography fields or the sound mixing community really watch AMOUR and vote for her? I have my doubts. I mean if they voted on performance wouldnt Fernanda Montenegro have won in 1998 for Central Station?
only four women have ever won acting prizes for work in a foreign language, 2 of them were hugely famous global sex symbols (penelope cruz, sophia loren), 1 was super beautiful and using the academy's two favorite baits: deglam + mimicry (marion cotillard) the other, marlee matlin was in sign language and she was 21 years old and beautiful and dating a major Hollywood Star. In other words they like their foreign language winners the same as their english language winners: beautiful princesses waiting for their crown.
this needs to be a blog post. a very very sad blog post.
Honestly, this year is quite exciting. We know that Best Picture is likely going to "Argo" now. Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress are locked and loaded.
Best Director? The director branch probably sensed in advance that if they ranked Ben Affleck high, he would get in and all the actors would vote for him. That's why he got snubbed. But turns out it's cementing him Best Picture instead (LOL). I don't think Steven Spielberg will win because Daniel Day Lewis' has kind of overshadowing the whole movie. I think it's Ang Lee Vs. Hanake.
Best Actress - This is not the Sandra Bullock's or Reese Witherspoon's year, where you could sense it was unstoppable. Really Jennifer Lawrence could be rewarded for the movie but I feel Riva is waiting to snatch the crown like Marion Cotillard. Once she wins the BAFTA, she's likely taking the Oscar too. But if the BAFTA goes to Jennifer, then it's a done deal.
Best Supporting Actor - I think this is clearly a battle between the two acting giants. Tommy Lee Jones has a better chance now that he has resumed his frontrunner status. However, I think Robert Deniro could still take it if the voters want to give the movie some win (which means they are voting Best Actress to someone else that isn't J-Law).
Best Original Screenplay - If comes oscar night, Amour wins here then you can bet it's taking Best Actress and Best Director with it.
Really, I feel very strongly with Amour's chances the same way I felt how Marion Cotillard was going to win the Oscar (even when she lost to Julie Christie at the SAG).
Too bad Jean-Louis Trintgnant wasn't nominated, I would be predicting him to be the alternative to DDL (lol).
Gotta add something to the Best Actress snark...
All of the nominees are excellent this year in their individual roles. If I had an Academy ballot, I would have a very difficult time deciding on who SHOULD win based on performance only--not the fact that someone is "due" or "old" or "adorable" or has "Weinstein in their corner". Yikes.
2010 was a very similar year in that the performances of all nominated actresses were stellar and contributed a great deal to the quality of their individual films. Kidman, Williams, and yes, Lawrence, were fantastic, with Bening turning in a pretty memorable performance.
FTR--can folks stop referring to Jennifer Lawrence as JLaw? It's degrading. Use that crap to talk about someone who really deserves it like the Kardashians or Jennifer Lopez. Besides E! or some other 'razzi mag made that shit up, so please stop.
I think Russell will win Best Director. He's been nominated before but he hasn't won, he's directed many actors to nominations and two (likely soon 3, possibly 4) to wins, and he has the whole personal story to accompany his film. Plus Silver Linings seems pretty popular.
I know he's had his issues with actors in the past, but supposedly he's overcome all that.
I was so thrilled to see Phyllis Logan up on stage with an award in her hands. I'm not desperately in love with Downton, but if that's what it takes to turn the world onto her talents then I'll be it's biggest champion. Anybody who loves serious actressing should acquaint themselves with her work in the film Another Time Another Place and then wring their hands in despair that she's gone unrecognised for so long.
Sally -- thanks for that. I shall try and find it. I think she's just superb on Downton, in the top 5 of that cast, easy. which is saying a lot.
I agree totally with you, Nathaniel, regarding best actress. I have not seen the movies but I also believe that Oscar loves to crown a princess and Jennifer Lawrence fits that role perfectly. She has box office mega-power, is young and beautiful and is a good actress. I think it is likely that all of the performances are outstanding. I wonder though about Naomi Watts again not getting any love. Every role I've seen her in, she has been brilliant. I also believe that Emmanuelle Riva had an extremely challenging role and from everyone's comments, she more than met the challenge. So I would be happy if Riva or Watts won. But I believe that Oscar no longer gives actress/supporting actress awards to anyone over 40. If you are not a young, popular, box office power actress you can forget winning an Oscar.That is the firm and fast Oscar rule except for Streep! ( Unfortunately, my favorite actress, Nicole Kidman, will never win her second Oscar. She cannot even get people to watch her movies in theaters and her films always lose big bucks. She will only be a footnote in film history for those reasons.)
FTR--can folks stop referring to Jennifer Lawrence as JLaw? It's degrading. Use that crap to talk about someone who really deserves it like the Kardashians or Jennifer Lopez. Besides E! or some other 'razzi mag made that shit up, so please stop.
Why? Jennifer herself has no issue about being dubbed JLaw at all:
I believe that Oscar no longer gives actress/supporting actress awards to anyone over 40
Dawn, stop. Actress in a Supporting Role will remain a haven for everyone who is excluded from actually winning Actress based on race, age, sex appeal, etc.