The SAG Nominations are Here

Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians) and Laverne Cox (Orange is the New Black) announced the nominations and joked about their height difference, while pronouncing all the names beautifully, being totally gorgeous, and staying enthusiastic about the whole damn thing. We thank them profusely because the ACTUAL nominations were among the worst we've ever seen in our long history of awards-watching and we might have experienced dry-heaving ourselves had we been forced to read them off.

Did the SAG nominating committees only screen 8 movies and 7 tv shows this year? 

Screen Actors Guild rules make voting your conscience about who is supporting and lead impossible (the members are required to vote however the actor is campaigned by the studio) unless you are conscientous enough to just not nominate the person if they are cheating... as we are when we vote on such things... but most nominators aren't. So this year we have even worse Category Fraud than usual -- there is barely a Supporting Actress category this year, at all, which is such a shame given all the worthy actual supporting female actors out there.

The nominations and some comments after the jump... 

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"The Favourite" Leads the Critics Choice Nominations

by Nathaniel R

me giving my fellow BFCA members the side-eye for some of their choices

Yorgos Lanthimos' pitch black comedy The Favourite led the Critic's Choice Nominations with a staggering 14 nods. Black Panther wasn't far behind with 12. The morning's biggest (and best) surprise is surely the resurgence of First Man, which had been struggling with precursors but has a very healthy 10 nominations with the BFCA. One wonders if it can rocket to a Best Picture nomination despite its box office troubles? In other very good news Toni Collette is nominated (though we aren't surprised in this case) and the foreign film list is aces. Well done.

Not that it's all good news but we're starting with the positives.

In the television categories (which are worth a read because they're quite different than the Globe nominations) Escape at Dannemora, The Americans, and The Assassination of Gianna Versace led all shows with 5 nominations a piece.  The complete list of nominees is after the jump along with a few comments...

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AFI Top Ten plus "Roma" but "Where is Crazy Rich Asians"?

The American Film Institute has announced their top 10 of the year... well top 11 since they did a bit of cheating this year. Well, more than a bit of cheating. Though their raison d'etre is to honor American films (see: their name), they included The Favourite, which is clearly a UK/Ireland production with a Greek director (even if some of the money is American). They also felt the need to give Mexico's Roma a special award. Can you blame them? Otherwise those two movies would have gone without awards this season. [Editor's note: Sarcasm!]

Their top ten is as follows...

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BIFA ❤️ "The Favourite" 10 Times

by Nathaniel R

Best Supporting Actor Alessandro Nivola

The 21st annual British Independent Film Awards were held today in London with sexy Russell Tovey hosting and The Favourite winning *GULP* 10 awards (that has to be a record at BIFA, doesn't it?). But the most wonderful surprise news around these parts is the Best Handsome win -- excuse us, Best Supporting Actor win for Alessandro Nivola. We were certain that he'd make it through the whole season with no hardware for his (typically) excellent work in Disobedience but BIFA happily proved us wrong. Nivola is of course something of an honorary Brit since he's married to a very fine British actress (Emily Mortimer) and has often worked in British cinema. 

The BIFA winners and a few more notes after the jump...

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Gotham Award Winners & Favourite Cheekiness

The Gotham Awards proved a great night for multiple films, but especially for A24 who dominated the prizes with multiple awards for both First Reformed and Eighth Grade and even a Best Actress win for our beloved Toni Collette in Hereditary.  Not that other studios didn't get some attention. Sony Picture Classics nabbed a surprise win in the Best Feature category and Fox Searchlight's The Favourite got a lot of attention, given that it received essentially two special prizes with an Ensemble Award and a tribute to Rachel Weisz. Weisz brought her co-stars along in cutout form in the acceptance speech - love it! 

 The list of winners and a few notes are after the jump...

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