The sun shone brightly on “Little Miss Sunshine” in Hollywood’s Oscar race on Monday after the film’s cast won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble. If last year’s SAG win by the cast of “Crash” is any indication, then “Sunshine,” takes the front runner position in the Oscar sweepstakes.
Popular Oscar punditry last year had it that “Crash” won the best film Oscar because actors loved it, and they make up the largest block of voters of the nearly 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But this horse race is far from over.
Hollywood seems to want to honor director Martin Scorsese for “The Departed” regardless of whether people think it’s the year’s best movie, and Clint Eastwood “Letters of Iwo Jima” is being helped by at least two factors. Eastwood is well-liked by Academy voters, and combined with “Flags of Our Fathers,” directing two movies about the same subject from two different points-of-view is a directorial feat that is hard to ignore.
For i
t’s part, “Babel” is a “love it or hate it movie” that splits voters right down the middle (director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu pictured left). There is no firm consensus on how many people side with the “love it” camp.
“The Queen,” for now, seems to be the darkest of dark horses.
The biggest factor “Sunshine” has going its way is that most everybody does like it, so it could be the movie that wins the most votes almost by default. Working against it is the fact it is a low-budget film with a sensibility outside Hollywood’s mainstream, and Oscar likes insiders.
Meanwhile, SAG winners Helen Mirren in “The Queen” and Forest Whittaker in “The Last King of Scotland” seem to be shoo-ins for best actress and best actor, respectively. They have been winning almost every award around.
Ditto for “Dreamgirls’” Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy for best supporting actress and actor, respectively. Then again, “Dreamgirls,” seemed to have a lock on a best movie nomination, but conventional wisdom is that too much conventional wisdom turned off Academy voters and “Letters from Iwo Jima” took its place among the five nominees.
Next up on the Oscar watch list, the Directors Guild of America Awards on Feb. 3, followed by the Writers Guild of America Awards on Feb. 11. Oscar ballots are due on Feb. 20, and the big show is set for five days later.
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As for my part, i seriously doubt “the departed” (and scorsese’s) ability to secure an Oscar. Having recently seen the film i sadly have to say it’s within the masrgin of a “good movie” but not a remarcable or a memorable one. Truth be told, few have been remarcable for the past few years. Also, “Little MIss Sunshine” - a favourite - still strikes me as an underdog. The low budget independent film striking Oscar gold, is a tale worth, in itself, of a cheesy ‘american dream’-type of movie, but won’t get attention beyond that.
- Posted by plugin babyPersonally, i have my money on Babel, for Innarritu’s addictive, gripping manenr of story-telling…after all, that’s why we go to the movies…