I just watched, for the first time, the telecast of the Screen Actors Guild Awards (aka, SAG Awards) and the ceremony was nice and swift. What left me wondering, however, is how its categories are setup.
The Guild awards TV dramas and comedies separately but it throws them in together when it comes to feature length movies. Why? Furthermore, it awards both leading and supporting roles for movies, but only one category each for TV series. Again, why?
Personally, I find separating dramas and comedies not only wise but necessary, as the two genres are so fundamentally different, and also because generally comedy always loses out to drama, so it makes sense to split the two in order to give the genre a fighting chance. The same holds for leading and supporting roles. It doesn’t make sense to bunch all actors together because a leading role would consistently trounce a supporting one.
That’s why the Guild’s awards assignment leaves me so puzzled. But I digress.
Boardwalk Empire and its star, Steve Buscemi, won Best Ensemble (the equivalent of Best Series) and Best Male Actor for Drama, a confirmation that the Golden Globes got it right and didn’t just award both for their own benefit. Julianna Margulies won Best Female Actor for The Good Wife for the second year in a row, while HBO snagged both Best Male and Best Female Actor in a TV Movie or Miniseries with Al Pacino for You Don’t Know Jack and Claire Danes for Temple Grandin respectively.
On the comedy side, Modern Family, one of my favorite shows, won Best Ensemble while Alec Baldwin, a perennial favorite, won Best Male Actor for 30 Rock for the fifth time in a row. The Best Female Actor category saw one of the night’s few shockers with a win for the legendary Betty White (who likely collected a lot of sympathy votes).
On the feature films side, Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, and Melissa Leo were all shoo-ins and all won without any surprises, but the shocker came with the last award, Best Cast in a Motion Picture, when The King’s Speech triumphed over The Social Network, which had been the favorite for the past few months.
Does this spell trouble for The Social Network at the upcoming Academy Awards? After all, it was the big winner a couple weeks ago at the Golden Globes, taking home 4 out of the 6 awards it was nominated for, including Best Picture, Director, Writing, and Score. The King’s Speech, on the other hand, was leading in terms of number of nominations (7) but only won Best Lead Actor for Firth.
Could it be that the tide is turning and The King’s Speech is now becoming the favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar? On the one hand, it just won top honors from the Directors and Producers Guilds. On the other, it wasn’t even nominated for Best Original Screenplay by the Writers Guild (although it is nominated in this category for an Oscar).
I guess we’ll find out in about a month.
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