SAG Awards Warm to Sunshine, Deny Borat
For Little Miss Sunshine, it was another day in the sun. For Borat, the climate was distinctively chillier.
Little Miss Sunshine, the indie comedy hit, was one of three films to nab a trio of nominations as the field for the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards was revealed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Borat, instigator Sacha Baron Cohen's guerrilla comedy blockbuster, suffered a rare awards-season setback and nabbed nothing. (Get the complete list of SAG nominations.)
In the TV categories, usual suspects Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy received nominations for their ensembles, while hot newcomer Heroes and old standby Lost got as much love—and nods—as Borat, namely none.
Heavyweight film contenders Babel and Dreamgirls also notched three nominations each. The pair will go up against Little Miss Sunshine, as well as the actor-friendly Bobby and The Departed, in the SAG Awards' equivalent of the Best Picture category: Outstanding Motion Picture Cast.
Last year, in an upset over Brokeback Mountain, Crash claimed the cast trophy, en route to pulling off an upset Best Picture win at the Oscars. To date, four of SAG's six Motion Picture Cast winners from the 2000s have gone on to claim the top prize at the Academy Awards.
While the royal drama The Queen didn't rate a Motion Picture Cast nomination, its chances for an Oscar Best Picture nod still seem solid, owing to its Producers Guild of America nod Wednesday.
Aside from The Queen exclusion, and the Bobby inclusion, SAG's Motion Picture Cast field mirrored PGA's Best Film field. Together, the two groups may have offered the best preview yet of the Oscars.
None of this is good news to Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, or any movie about 9/11 or Iraq (United 93, World Trade Center, Home of the Brave, etc.). All were ignored by the acting and producing guilds.
Top SAG nominees Babel, Dreamgirls and Sunshine did most of their damage in the supporting actor categories, as the film's respective stars (Babel's Brad Pitt, Dreamgirls' Beyoncé Knowles, Sunshine's Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear, etc.) were denied in the lead actor categories.
The Pitt-less Outstanding Motion Picture Male Actor in a Leading Role race looks a lot like the Golden Globe's Lead Actor in a Motion Picture Drama race: Blood Diamond's Leonardo DiCaprio versus Venus' Peter O'Toole, The Pursuit of Happyness' Will Smith and The Last King of Scotland's Forest Whitaker, with an added dash of Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson).
At the Globes, DiCaprio will compete against himself and his work in The Departed. At the SAGs, DiCaprio will be spared the conflict, as his turn as one of Departed's cops was slotted as a supporting role.
As such, DiCaprio, the supporting actor, will vie for a second individual SAG award opposite Alan Arkin, nominated as Sunshine's drug-addled gramps; former Bad News Bears outfielder Jackie Earle Haley, back in the game with Little Children; Blood Diamond costar Djimon Hounsou; and Eddie Murphy, a first-time nominee for doing a James Brown/Little Richard mash-up in Dreamgirls.
The Queen's chief Oscar favorite, Helen Mirren, will try to bag a SAG for Outstanding Female Actor in a Leading Role opposite Penélope Cruz (Volver), Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal), Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) and Kate Winslet (Little Children).
Abigail Breslin, the Little Miss Sunshine pageant hopeful of Little Miss Sunshine, finally got some awards-show glory of her own, pulling in a SAG nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. The 10-year-old veteran will face off against 25-year-old newcomer Jennifer Hudson, still collecting nominations for her showstopping turn in Dreamgirls; Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, up for Notes on a Scandal; and Babel's Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi.
The doctors of Grey's Anatomy are in business in SAG's Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series category. They'll go up against the drama queens of 24, the Old West denizens of Deadwood, the lawyers of Boston Legal and the mobsters of The Sopranos.
In the Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series category, defending champ Desperate Housewives is pitted against Entourage, The Office, Weeds and breakout freshman Ugly Betty.
The Desperate Housewives re-nomination aside, the TV categories were the site of some major snubs. Lost, last year's drama ensemble champ, was completely shut out of this year's nominations; while Grey's Anatomy's Sandra Oh, last year's winner as Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, was missing from this year's lineup (although she's still a nominee by virtue of her show's ensemble nod). Ditto for the non-nominated Sean Hayes, who was eligible to repeat in the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series category for the defunct Will & Grace.
Almost as fortunate as the hard-to-kill Jack Bauer, Kiefer Sutherland will get the chance to defend his SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series. His competition: The Sopranos' James Gandolfini. Dexter's Michael C. Hall. House's Hugh Laurie and Boston Legal's James Spader, who previously competed in the comedy category, as did his show.
With Oh out of the Female Actor in a Drama Series race, costar Chandra Wilson gets a shot at the SAG. Seattle Grace's resident Dr. Bailey will go up against Medium's Patricia Arquette, The Soprano's Edie Falco, Law & Order: SVU's Mariska Hargitay and The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick.
With Hayes on the sidelines and Spader reclassified, the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series race will have an almost entirely new look. My Name Is Earl's Jason Lee, the only repeat nominee, will vie for the trophy against 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin, The Office's Steve Carell, Entourage's Jeremy Piven and Monk's Tony Shalhoub.
Adding in the ensemble nods for The Office and Little Miss Sunshine, Carell stands to win more SAGs—three—than any other performer not named DiCaprio. The performer named DiCaprio also has a shot at three SAGs.
Ugly Betty's America Ferrera has a shot at her first big awards-show win after securing a berth in the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series race. Her considerable competition—the field is comprised of six nominees, not the usual five: defending champ Felicity Huffman, once again the only Desperate Housewives star to rate an individual nomination; Julia Louis-Dreyfus, trying to collect more hardware for The New Adventures of Old Christine; Megan Mullally, earning a nice (and final) recognition for Will & Grace on the day after her daytime talk show was canceled; Mary-Louise Parker, still pushing Weeds; and expectant mom Jaime Pressly, picking up her first individual SAG nod for My Name Is Earl.
Mirren, a triple nominee at the Golden Globes, will make do with "only" two SAG noms. Her second nod, in the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries category, is for her other turn as a queen in the HBO miniseries Elizabeth I. The other nominees: Mrs. Harris' Annette Bening, who is having little luck rounding up film nominations for Running with Scissors; Cloris Leachman, another Mrs. Harris hopeful; Greta Scacchi, up for AMC's Broken Trail; and Shirley Jones, following up on last fall's Emmy nomination—her first in more than 30 years—with her first SAG nomination for Hallmark Channel's Hidden Places.
Huffman spouse William H. Macy will try to uphold the family awards-show tradition by claiming a SAG for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries for TNT's Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. The other candidates: Broken Trail's Thomas Haden Church and Robert Duvall; Elizabeth I's Jeremy Irons; and Matthew Perry, up for TNT's The Ron Clark Story, and not for NBC's ignored Studio 60.
The SAG Awards are scheduled to be presented Jan. 28 in Los Angeles. Julie Andrews has been tapped to receive the guild's 43rd Life Achievement Award.




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