SAG Award for Best Cast: Predictions & Wish List

Amir here, to write about one of my favourite awards of the season: the SAG award for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture". I say "favourite" because, in principle, I love the notion of awarding actors who work together as a group to make a film tick. In my ideal world, the best cast award is more about collective achievements than multiple individual ones but over the years, SAG’s top award has sadly become synonymous with Best Picture. Genuine ensemble pieces have often been ignored in favour of Oscar’s best picture frontrunners or films with the highest number of nominees in other SAG categories. Yet, despite my disappointment, I can’t stop obsessing over this award or detach myself.

Who will follow the cast of The Help to a SAG cast win?

This year is bound to be a similar affair, with the three frontrunning Oscar films all poised to win SAG nods in this category. Nonetheless, let’s look at what will get nominated and what should. 

Les Misérables
I have yet to see Les Misérables, but the rapturous response from this week’s screenings (Nathaniel was at the first one) suggests that we will collectively forgive Hooper for stealing The Social Network’s thunder once we finally lay eyes on his newest film. (Though, I'll still begrudge The King’s Speech for winning the SAG "cast" award two years ago. Two great performances and one default “supporting wife” nominee don't merit a best cast prize, especially in the presence of The Kids Are Alright and The Fighter.)

More hopefuls after the jump...

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Summer Survey. Katey & JA (Pt. 2)

To recap... now that summer movie season 2012 is a wrap, we're polling contributors, friends and YOU about your favorite and least favorite things of the summer. It's just a glass of something light and bubbly to raise, gulp down quickly and bring a little closure before the heavier stuff hits.

In Part 1, we heard from a few good men and here's two more voices for Part 2. Parts 3 and 4 are the podcast this weekend!

KATEY
who you know and love from Cinema Blend and the occasional podcast here...

Best Movie I Saw All Summer: 
I'm surprising myself by answering Magic Mike. It's got more confidence, more imagination and more willingness to let it all hang out than most anything else the studio system produced all year. 
Scenes I  ♥ So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst: 
1) Natasha's interrogation scene at the beginning of The Avengers-- I've always been wishy-washy on Whedon but his feminist credentials are unbeatable. 2) Norman's confrontation with the witch at the end of ParaNorman, some of the most dazzling and daring animation for kids I've ever seen. 3) The completely insane vampire-chase-on-horseback scene in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a not-very-good movie that I admired for its insane ideas all the same.

Major Summer Crush(es): Emma Stone (she really can liven up anything, even something as ungainly as The Amazing Spider-Man), Michael Fassbender (that Peter O'Toole impression just slays), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (I stand by him being the best thing in The Dark Knight Rises), and Chris Hemsworth (he seems to be the only person with a pulse in Snow White and the Huntsman) 

Princess Merida, Katniss or Hawkeye? 

Merida! Brave didn't get nearly enough love for all the things it did really well
At Least The Theater Was Air Conditioned: 
Hit & Run. Bad, self-indulgent filmmaking coupled with an awful audience that laughed at every dumb joke that made me cringe. 
If Only "Hulk" Had Smashed...: 
Battleship, to save Taylor Kitsch from himself. 

 

Mash-Up ~Two Summer Characters I'd Like to Introduce: 
Hushpuppy from Beasts of the Southern Wild and Snow White from Snow White and the Huntsman, to teach her a thing or two about making your way through nature and asserting your power in a world that wants to shove you down. 

Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me! : Metropolis! When I found out the restored version was on Netflix Instant it seemed a crime to ignore it, and it turns out it's mesmerizing even on the tiny laptop screen. 
Rank the  "Magic Mike" Strippers:  
I actually wrote an article with this exact ranking!

Line Reading That Stuck In My Head...

 Jiminy Cricket, he's flown the coop!"
- Edward Norton in Moonrise Kingdom

 

JA of MNPP
Best Movie I Saw All Summer:
Moonrise Kingdom, which I only fell even more in love with on a second viewing. Everything feels just right, from Frances McDormand's sweater over house-dress ensembles on up. Or maybe Todd Solondz' Dark Horse, which broke my heart into fifty thousand little pieces.
Scenes I  ♥ So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst: 
The Lovecraftian C-section to end all Lovecraftian C-sections in Prometheus and all of the stripping sequences in Magic Mike (although it wasn't really the "heart" part of my anatomy that was fit to burst....)  
Things I Actually Learned (at summer movie camp!)
1) Joss Whedon should direct every superhero movie from now on (I figured as much beforehand but The Avengers circled and underlined my suspicions)
2) Woody Allen should probably only make a movie every two years.
3) Prostate exams and currency debates can totally add up to sexy.
 

Princess Merida, Katniss or Hawkeye? 
Only one of these people twirled a dress right into flames, and as much as Jeremy Renner wishes, it wasn't him. 

Choose only one archer! Katniss, Princess Merida or Hawkeye

At Least The Theater Was Air Conditioned: 
The Dark Knight Rises

If Only "Hulk" Had Smashed...
Christopher Nolan's camera
Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me! : 
I bet this is the first time that David Lean's "Kate Hepburn takes Venice" movie Summertime has ever tied for anything with Squirm, the 1976 earthworms-run-amok flick, but that's just how I roll. 

Major Summer Crush(es):
BOMER. CHARLIZE.

Rank the  "Magic Mike" Strippers 
Mike beats Ken only because Channing can out-dance everybody else put together. From there it's The Kid, Dallas, Tito and Tarzan.
Mash-Up ~ Two Summer Characters I'd Like to Introduce: 
Bane and Jackie & David Siegel from The Queen of Versailles, for obvious reasons

Line Reading That Stuck In My Head...

I don't really like the word 'depressed'. I prefer to say I'm in a tailspin."
- Greta Gerwig in Damsels in Distress

And that's it for us until the podcast! If you have your own blog, answer the questions in a post and I'll link up. Otherwise, what do you think of JA's and Katey's summer summaries? The "Katniss, Merida or Hawkeye"? question is such a roscharch. No two answers are quite the same!  

Moviegoing Diaries: Magic Mike

[Editor's note: We're toying with a new multi-author series about our experiences at the movie theater. We'll let Beau kick it off from the West Coast with Magic Mike.] 

I blame Channing Tatum’s ass.  

The date had been going along fine. He wasn’t terribly cute, but he was attractive. That’s a very important distinction. We both shared a similar affinity for film, both were heavily involved in productions in and outside of college. (He adored Soderbergh, I’m a Bergman and Ashby kind of guy. Come to think of it, I wonder what they thought of each other. Ashby being an addiction-ridden humanist hippie, Bergman being the son of a preacher man who’d engaged in more onscreen love affairs than Warren Beatty.) We’d already argued about Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter, laughed heartily at the Pitch Perfect trailer, my reservations slowly subsiding, trying to remind myself to be open to the experience. (The Schizo Gay Cupid on dates is so frustrating.)

And then, the goddamn film started... 

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Box Office Special. A Sticky Cartoon Strip-a-Thon !

I didn't cover the box office last weekend in one of it's most interesting episodes. What's wrong with me? So today in honor of Channing Tatum's third consecutive $35 million plus opening last weekend (expect him to be offered every part for a 25-40 year old man in the next year, even the ones he's totally wrong for) a Magic Mike themed box office countdown to kick off Stripper Week. I'm pretending that the nation's #1 movie featured a musical stripping sequences a la Magic Mike. Just go with it. (File under: Anything to keep the commerce part of movie-going interesting. Cuz that's so notthe interesting part!)

Inappropriate Spider-Man cartoon (I made it*!) 

Box office chart after the jump...

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Basic Link-stinct

Never Mind Pop Film lists "rules of the cinematic universe" and they're really so true
Tom and Lorenzo Sharon Stone is still a star
The Oregonian theories as to why festival hits do such middling box office 
Empire The Hobbit Parts 1 & 2 have finished filming. 
/ Film How ridiculous is this? A new Aliens related video game won't include any playable female characters? Fans are up in arms. This is after all the franchise that starred Lt. Ellen Ripley and now Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. 

The Film Doctor on Wes Anderson's miniaturized world in Moonrise Kingdom
Handmade this is so cool Moonrise Kingdom Cross Stitch. This movie is aging well in my brain... and heart.
Interiors Film Journal maps out the great elevator scene in Drive
Burbanked on the trailer to Here Comes the Boom. I would only add: why is no one complaining that the plot is like a grotesque parody of Warrior (2011)? 
In Contention Tapley asks a smart question "Could Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes's divorce make The Master this year's zeitgeist movie?" 
Hollywood.com ohmygod. with headlines like this "Could Dark Knight Rises win Best Picture?" all I can say is 'Here we go again. Gird your loins!'

Off Cinema 4 Fun
Abtruse Goose "arithmetic for beginners" 
Twaggies this website illustrates funny tweets. This one has a movie connection sort of 

Today's Must Read
Listen, I know I link to Tom Shone way too much. I have a massive mancritic crush, I freely admit. I just love his writing. His new column for the Guardian "Magic Mike turned me gay!" is great... Like Mr. Shone, I am bisexual at the movie theater so I appreciate the confession. The article even veers towards the difference and sameness of the "male and female gaze," a topic we just happened to be on while discussing Kim Novak in Picnic (1955).