Podcast: Everything you wanted to know about precursor awards week ... but were afraid to ask*

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl welcome back NICK DAVIS! 

In this hour long conversation Nick, Murtada, and your TFE mastermind Nathaniel discuss the first gigantic week of precursor season. What hath the Globes and SAG wrought and who are we sad about (Alfre Woodard!) and who are we rooting for (Antonio Banderas) and the like. We're divided on Judy and Dark Waters and Robert DeNiro's The Irishman and we dunk a little on Richard Jewell and The Two Popes (sorry!). We also have words for NEON not finding a way to honor Clemency while pushing Parasite. Finally we try to suss out the impossible "Best Actor" race which is giving everyone predictive pause.  

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Precursor Madness

"Everyone was nominated... except you!" Our annual SAG outrage!

by Nathaniel R

Alanna Ubach does a lot with very little screen time in "Bombshell" but she isn't part of the cast nomination

We'll keep doing these posts each year until the Screen Actors Guild does something about their most unfortunate awards rule. For those who are new to the awards game, please note: If you are a working actor lucky enough to wind up in a film nominated for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture," that doesn't mean you are included in the nomination; you have to have your own title card for that! What this means each year is that actors who aren't really famous yet, or don't have an aggressive agent, wind up left out of the official nomination even if they contributed immeasurably to the success of the film or were highly memorable in some small but defining way.

So who got the stealth snub in 2019, who otherwise had every reason to celebrate the nomination? Read on for the specific exclusions this year and the history of most embarrassing omissions from the past due this ruling...

Click to read more ...

SAG Nominations

by Nathaniel R

It was a surprising morning at the SAG nominations with Bombshell coming in hot with 4 nominations (!!!) and Parasite becoming only the second foreign language film ever nominated for Oustanding Cast. In other news we saw the first chink in Netflix's considerable Oscar-seeking armor today as The Irishman and Marriage Story both arguably underperformed and Dolemite was shut out. (And, as always, we've investigated the "Cast" nominations to see who was left out.)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role:

Christian Bale (“Ford v Ferrari”)

Leonardo DiCaprio (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)

Adam Driver (“Marriage Story”)

Taron Egerton (“Rocketman”)

Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”)

In a surprising state of affairs -- though not as surprising if you remember that SAG nominations often skew “earlier” buzz than what’s happening in December, Taron Egerton, Leo DiCaprio, and Christian Bale are all accounted for rather than later openings like Robert DeNiro, Adam Sandler. Netflix push Eddie Murphy also failed to win them over...

Click to read more ...

SAG Predictions from a SAG Nominating Committee Member!

[Secret Guest Post]

Awkwafina announcing the nominees last season. I think she'll be nominated this year.Hello again to readers of The Film Experience!  I previously shared a few reactions from our SAG nominating committee screenings including The Farewell and The Irishman and Bombshell and Little Women. The following are my predictions for tomorrow, NOT who I nominated (I nominated only 8 of these 30 predictions.)

LEAD ACTOR
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Robert De Niro, The Irishman
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes

LEAD ACTRESS
Akwafina, The Farewell
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Lupita Nyong’o, Us
Renee Zellweger, Judy

I’m skeptical about Ronan, Theron and Woodard in Best Actress since their screeners came relatively late...

Click to read more ...

Kathy Bates going lead for Richard Jewell!

Shortly after updating the Best Supporting Actress chart and placing Kathy Bates in the mix for Richard Jewell, one of our SAG Nominating Committee friends sent us this image.  SURPRISE. Kathy Bates is campaigning as a lead at SAG.

Longtime awards obsessives will already know this but for newbies to the intricacies of awards season you should know that SAG voters do not have a choice where they place actors. They can only vote on them in the categories for which they've officially been submitted by the studios (same with Emmy voters). Occassionally SAG and Oscar campaign tactics are different, studios changed their mind, or errors are made by administrative types so people nominated in lead at SAG occassionally go on to win supporting acting Oscars (Benicio del Toro in Traffic / Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind) or go from being a supporting nominee at SAG to a leading player with Oscar (Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider / Kate Winslet in The Reader).

How will this all shake out?