What do the results tell us about the Oscar race?

Cillian Murphy

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A weekend full of last-minute Oscar buzz — the final round of voting for the Film Academy opened on February 22 and will close on February 27 — kicked off Saturday night with the 30th SAG Awards, the first major awards show ever to stream on Netflix. But do Saturday night’s results provide reliable clues about what will happen two weeks from Sunday night at the 96th Academy Awards?

I would argue that they probably do.

SAG Awards winners are determined by the nearly 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA, the world’s largest actors’ union, while Academy Award winners are determined by the nearly 9,500 voting members of the Film Academy, 86% of whom no actors, suggesting that any overlap is purely coincidental.

But it’s pretty clear that SAG-AFTRA members voted Best Actor in a Movie — which has long seemed to be pretty close between the genders. Cillian Murphy to Oppenheimer more Paul Giamatti to Retainers – for Irishman Murphy over American Giamatti, since SAG-AFTRA members are overwhelmingly American (while 25 percent of the academy’s membership now resides outside the United States). Additionally, Giamatti looks every bit like the average SAG-AFTRA voter, which may explain why he won earlier three SAG Awards for Individual Performance (Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, 2005 Cinderella man and Best Actor in a TV Movie/Limited Series, 2008 John Adams And 2012 Too big to fail) and another as part of the winning band (2004 Sideways).

In other words, if Murphy can beat out Giamatti with SAG-AFTRA (on the heels of a Best Actor BAFTA win), it’s hard to imagine he can’t/won’t win it with the Academy.

As for the best actress race, it has long seemed like a tale between two “Stones” movies. Bad things‘ Emma Stone And Moonflower Killers‘s Lily Gladstone. Stone had recently won a BAFTA, for which Gladstone wasn’t even nominated, so Gladstone was desperate to win a SAG Award to at least show that she was still a toss-up — and she got it, making history in the process by becoming the first Native American to win an award. SAG for individual performance.

But here things get difficult. When casting choices from SAG-AFTRA and the Academy have diverged in recent years, it has often been the case that the more diverse/populist guild rewarded a person of color, while the Academy did not. Recent examples include a SAG Award that will go to Chadwick Boseman to Ma Rainey’s black bottom But the Oscar will go Anthony, Hopkins to the fatherThe SAG Award will go to… Viola Davis to Ma Rainey’s black bottom But the Oscar will go Frances McDormand to BedouinThe SAG Award will go to… Denzel Washington to Fences But the Oscar will go Casey Affleck to Manchester by seaThe SAG Award will go to… Idris Elba to Monsters, not a nation But the Oscar will go Mark Rylance to Bridge of Spies The SAG Award will go to Viola Davis to Help But the Oscar will go Meryl Streep to The iron lady.

However, in each of the past two years, the SAG Awards and Academy Awards have chosen the same four winners, including two people of color each year. So maybe the gap is closing?

There’s also a wild card heading into the Oscars. At the Golden Globes and BAFTAs, Stone and Gladstone did not have to compete against each other. At the Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG Awards, Stone and Gladstone didn’t have to compete against them another person Who are they with? currently Competing on Oscar ballots: Best Picture Oscar-nominated star Anatomy of a fall, Sandra Holler. I hear an unmistakable level of enthusiasm for Holler from Academy members, which makes me wonder whether she is more likely to draw votes from Stone or Gladstone — or perhaps even beat them both. This would be a huge and challenging surprise, but not unprecedented: three People have won Oscars for acting without ever winning a Critics Choice, Golden Globe, BAFTA, or SAG Awards (Marcia Jay Harden She won Best Supporting Actress of the 2000s Bullock, Denzel Washington He won the Best Actor award in 2001 Training day And Adrien Brody He won the Best Actor award in 2002 pianist).

As for the supporting acting Oscar categories, they appear to be closed. The SAG-AFTRA Award for Best Supporting Actor went to Robert Downey Jr. to Oppenheimer And for best supporting actress it went to Davin Joy Randolph to Retainersas is the case with all other major awards ceremonies, so there is virtually no basis for predicting anyone else will win on March 10.

The same is almost certainly true of Oppenheimer In the Oscar race for Best Picture, after winning the SAG Award for Best Ensemble American fantasy, Barbie And Moonflower Killerswhich was also nominated for the highest Oscar, and Violet, and it is not. To be clear, the SAG Award is the best no They have a solid track record of being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture – except for the years in which it won annoyed It happens to the latter. In fact, almost every Best Picture Oscar began with the Best Cast winning the SAG Award: Shakespeare in love more Saving Private Ryan, Crashes more Brokeback Mountain, Highlight more The return And parasite more 1917. (The return And 1917 They weren’t even nominated for a SAG Award for Outstanding Cast.) The truth is Oppenheimer He won every single one of the previous awards leading up to the SAG Awards, and then won Best Actor, suggesting he was comfortably in first place for the top Oscar.

Anyway, the rollercoaster ride will continue on Sunday with the Film Independent Spirit Awards during the day and the Producers Guild of America PGA Awards at night. Relax, Oscar watchers, we haven’t reached the finish line yet!