SAG Nomination Surprises: Emily Blunt, Captain Fantastic, and More

As we've noted several times in the past, SAG nominations are often among the most surprising for two reasons. First, the nominating committee changes each year, drawn randomly from the Screen Actor's Guild enormous body of dues paying members. Second, because the members are randomly selected and (presumably) spread out more geographically than the easier to target Academy and Globe members, their nominations can often feel like they were voted on earlier and that's the case this year with more summer films nominated than other awards bodies went with. 

The nominees with commentary are after the jump...

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Who Deserves Ensemble Nominations at SAG?

by Nathaniel R

Ballots for the Screen Actors Guild nominations are due tomorrow. Their most crucial category is Outstanding Ensemble. People liken it constantly to Best Picture and while it's not supposed to be that, they do sometimes vote that way. Given the way SAG voting works with a new nominating committee randomly drawn each year from among the many many thousands of SAG members, nothing is ever truly safe. Sometimes their nominations are surprising but cool (remember Hustle & Flow or The Station Agent's ensemble nods?), other times they feel like lazy Best Picture predictions. And then there are the years when they appear to have voted in early Fall before anyone saw movies and any buzz started to solidify. It's tough to know what kind of year we'll have... 

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Critics Choice Confusion: Earlier still even after that "We voted too early!" scandal last season

My apologies that I've neglected to mention one significant but oddly motivated date change for this forthcoming awards season. But it is definitely worth discussing.

You may recall that The Broadcast Film Critics Association (of which I am a member) more commonly known as "Critics Choice" lost several members last season due a very unethical move. The executives opted to ignore the balloting and just polled critics informally about whether they would have included Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) had they seen it in time. I've yet to understand what their thinking was since, without changing all the voting, that one unethical change was clearly doing to do nothing for the ceremony or their reputation beyond harming it. The Star Wars cast was never going to show up since they were all busy and they weren't nominated in the Action performance categories designed to honor such things. 

Now after that "we voted too early!" disaster, this season they've moved the voting and the ceremony earlier still....

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Congratulations, Lily Tomlin!

Photographed by Sebastian Kim for Interview

Lily Tomlin will be honored with SAG's Lifetime Achievement Award at this January's ceremony. SAG is strong with the actress-loving (unlike Oscar). This marks the 4th year in a row that the award has gone to a woman following Carol Burnett, Debbie Reynolds, and Rita Moreno.

We celebrated Lily a lot here last year with a look at her filmography, my own top 10 choices amongst her performances and I was proud to be on the poster for Grandma extolling her virtues so we've already had our say. I only ask that during the clip reel they show something from I ♥️ Huckabees (2004) because I'll never get enough of that character. I wish she and Dustin Hoffman could do a whole series about them or at least occasional webisodes of the further adventures of Vivian and Bernard, Existential Detectives.

156 Days Until SAG Nominations !

Premature you say? Well, they just sent out a press release. The Awards Season Calendar just keeps filling in. It currently looks like so:

2016
Aug 31st-Sept 10th Venice Film Festival
Sept 2nd-5th Telluride Film Festival
Sept 8th-18th Toronto International Film Festival
Sept 18th -The 68th Annual Emmy Awards
Sep 30th-Oct 16th New York Film Festival
Nov 10th-17th AFI Festival
Nov 12th Governor's Awards (Honorary Oscars)
Nov 17th-Dec 11th SAG Nomination Balloting
Nov 25th-Dec 9th Golden Glob Nomination Balloting Begins
Dec 12th Golden Globe Nominations
Dec 14th SAG Nominations
Dec 19th-Jan 27th Final SAG Voting

2017
Jan 5th-13th Oscar Nomination Balloting
Jan 8th -The 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards
Jan 24th -Oscar Nominations
Jan 29th -The 23rd Annual SAG Awards
Feb 4th -The 69th Annual DGA Awards
Feb 6th Oscar Nominee Luncheon
Feb 11th Sci-Tech Oscars
Feb 12th - The 59th Annual Grammy Awards
Feb 13th-21st Final Oscar Voting
Feb 26th -The 89th Annual Academy Awards

YES, THIS MEANS I NEED TO START THOSE FREQUENT OSCAR CHART UPDATES. SOON DEAR ONES, VERY SOON.