Tag: Denzel Washington

“Hidden Figures” Wins Best Ensemble At SAG Awards

Hidden Figures won big at the Screen Actor’s Guild awards after the cast was awarded the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture, besting the favorite to win Moonlight. It just crossed the $100 million mark at the box office this weekend too. I thought that if Moonlight lost this it would cement La La Land’s win, but coupled with this win, it shouldn’t be counted out of the Best Picture race especially since La La Land was not nominated here. The Oscars love their crowdpleasers, and much of La La Land‘s campaign has been built on it being one. And sure, it has a PGA win, but Hidden Figures is every bit of the crowdpleaser that La La Land is, better even and the race is far from over. Watch out.

The other big “shocker” of the night came when Denzel Washington beat Casey Affleck in Best Actor. Many were predicting Affleck to continue his sweep here but I had a hunch Washington would win here; he had never won an award here before, which is absolutely insane to think about. 

The rest of the categories went pretty much as expected: Emma Stone began her march towards an Oscar by repeating her win at Golden Globes. Any hopes of a late surge for Natalie Portman seem entirely unrealistic now. Mahershala Ali and Viola Davis won in their respective categories. 

See the full list of winners below. 

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Screen Actor’s Guild Predictions: Can “Moonlight” Emerge As “La La Land’s” Biggest Competition?

We have now entered Phase 2 of awards season: Oscar nominations have been announced, and now it’s about threading a narrative to create/build and/or maintain enough momentum to win an Oscar.

Last year, we saw the tide turn quickly against The Revenant, which came into Oscar night with a whopping 12 nominations and losing Best Picture to Spotlight and other technical awards to Mad Max: Fury Road. The same thing happened to American Hustle a few years ago; it scored 13 nominations and a ton of late breaking heat from the Golden Globes and Screen Actor’s Guild and won nothing on Oscar night. This year is obviously much different than those years, with La La Land being much more of an Oscar-friendly and consensus title than the other ones I mentioned. 

Curiously enough, La La Land only managed nominations for Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, and did not appear in the line up for Best Ensemble which is worth noting. It’s true that La La Land is a lot of just Stone and Gosling, but that hasn’t stopped SAG from nominating films with smaller ensembles before (remember Beasts of No Nation last year? It only had three actors cited). The Producer’s Guild also announces their winner this weekend, which La La Land will almost certainly win. But SAG represents the actors, which outnumber the producers that vote within the Academy which is why I think Moonlight can emerge as a big threat this weekend (but more on that later). 

Let’s go through the categories. 

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Watch the New, Powerful “Fences” Trailer

We’re still about a month away from the premiere of Denzel Washington’s Fences, but Paramount isn’t wasting any time getting the film out in front of people.

After a splashy premiere at the AFI fest and several industry screenings, Fences has moved up into the Oscar race in a big way.With so much of the Academy comprising of actors, Fences should have no problem raking in a bunch of nominations. The only question now is just how big will Fences be? And can it win Washington a Best Actor Oscar, making it his third trophy?

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