The Screen Actors Guild of American announced their winners last night. Frontrunners emerged.
Apple won four huge SAG Awards last night and may beat Netflix and Amazon to the Oscars Best Picture.
“CODA” won Best Ensemble and Troy Kotsur won Best Supporting Actor tonight. This is immense. “CODA” won Ensemble over “Power of the Dog,” and “Belfast.” I am not at all ready to call it the Frontrunner, but holy hell is this a twist or what?
This is also a huge win for virtual Sundance, where Apple paid a record $25 million for “CODA.” I don’t think it actually played in a movie theater. “CODA” has been playing on Apple TV since last August. It’s a major crowdpleaser and now many more Oscar voters are set to watch it, or re-watch it, at the comfort of their own homes.
And now the race is on.
Will Smith won the Leading Actor trophy for his strong performance in “King Richard.” There was a chance Benedict Cumberbatch could emerge the victor here, but the Smith prevailed and the punditry that claimed he’d win the Oscar all the way back in September seems to have been accurate.
The other big news from last night’s awards is that someone emerged as a frontrunner in the Best Actress category. As predicted by yours truly a few weeks back (and loyal reader Teddy!) Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) pulled out a win in the Leading Actress category. The narrative behind her is too irresistible for voters to ignore. Yes, this isn’t Chastain’s best work (that would be “Zero Dark Thirty”), but her performance was solid and she’s been one of the consistently best actresses around for more than a decade now. Oscar awaits.
Another prediction I had made came to fruition. Troy Kotsur (“CODA”) won in the Supporting Male category. Remember folks, with these Academy voters it’s all about the narrative. Now, Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog), the supposed frontrunner, has major competition on his back. Kotsur might become the first the first deaf male actor to win an acting Oscar, and only the second deaf Oscar winner in history. McPhee can still win, but he’s now up against a megaton bomb of narrative-making. It helps that Kotsur’s performance is dramatic and comedic, a real show-stealer.
The Supporting Actress award went to the underserving Ariana DeBose. Don’t ask me how the “West Side Story” actress has become the frontrunner to win the Oscar. Her performance wasn’t better than Rachel Zegler, Mike Faist, or even Rita Moreno’s in her own movie. Again. narrative, narrative, narrative. It’s all about that and DeBose has become a darling of social media and punditry these last few months.
Paul Greengrass’ "The Uprising," starring Andrew Garfield, opened to $3.2M from 2,068 theaters this weekend. Yikes. The budget hasn’t been disclosed, but is said to be in the $20-$30M range.