SAG Live-Blog. Less Painful Than Oral Surgery?

 6:10 Here we are again. Another weekend, another awards show. Three more to go: SAG (tonight), BAFTA, and then the big Kahuna, Oscar Oscar Oscar. I warn you all up front that I am live blogging tonight with a terrible toothache. I fear I need a root canal. I've heard they're very painful but having lived through so many Oscar races, I figure I've had so much psychic pain -- Crash anyone? -- that my nerve endings are probably shot anyway. Hi Tom Hooper! So, what's a little oral surgery?

Armie Hammer is a dork, an adorable dork.

What's the word for someone who is just genius at something without trying to be, an idiot savant? That doesn't sound flattering. Soooo the flattering version of that. Whatever the term is. That's what Hailee Steinfled is. Hailee is home schooled and Mean Girls taught us that that makes for smart girls, Mathletes even. Every single time she's worn something amazing and she's not repeating looks either. She looks even better tonight in a bright colorful stripey thing that only a 14 year old could pull off at a big deal Hollywood event and still make it look glam. Who are her acting heroes?

Besides Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman is somebody I've always looked up to. Diane Lane I love. I don't know I just love the fact that they love what they do. They bring such joy to their work.

The Diane Lane answer totally surprised me. She gleeks out over blonde himbo Chord Overstreet from Glee who Guiliana (from E!) then grills about his hair. He claims "I just get out of the shower and shake it." That's what I do, too!

6:20 Guilina interviews Jesse Eisenberg. Asks him 'how did you get here?'

On a airplane. It's very efficient.

Ha. Love it. He just can't play the 'I love this inane IQ free banter.' game.

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Sundance Festival Awards Wrap

Mostly I've been just motoring along, not too sad about having missed Sundance this year until it occurred to me what a jump start it gave me on this current Oscar race -- not too mention my own rooting interests at the film bitch awards. Whoa unto us who cannot afford a week in the snowy Utah mountains. I'm dying to see Vera Farmiga's directorial debut but otherwise I have poured over precious few Sundance articles. There was too much Oscar noise this week to give it much thought. But here's what Sundance went for with a passion.

Vera Farmiga, Dr. Nner and America Ferrara (photo from Zimbio)

The Sundance 2011 Awards broke down like so...

Juried
Grand Prize Dramatic Like Crazy
Grand Prize Documentary How To Die in Oregon
World Cinema Dramatic Happy, Happy
World Cinema Documentary Hell and Back Again

Like CrazyThe big breakout of the festival was Like Crazy, a cross-Atlantic romantic drama starring Actress winner Felicity Jones (the new Carey Mulligan they're saying... but isn't that just because Carey was a breakout at the same festival in a romantic drama?). It sold to Paramount for $4 million. If the past couple of festival years are any indication this does mean that Felicity Jones will be in the Oscar discussion a year from now. To be uncharitable and frank, I'm completely weirded out by this because a) she didn't register at all in Chéri despite a key role and b) I thought she was less than say "good" in The Tempest (2010) and all she had to do there was affectively portray falling in love as well as conveying being the sheltered child of a bossy mother. If Felicity Jones is a revelation here after that than Julie Taymor is an even worse director than I previously thought! Also weirding me out is the prospect of lil' Anton Yelchin as a romantic lead. Anton Yelchin. Isn't he that brainy little kid from Huff? Didn't he just look like a 12 year old playing at Chekov in Star Trek (2009)? My god they grow up so fast. ♪ sunrise sunset sunrise sunset ♫

Directing, Dramatic Sean Durkin for Martha Marcy May Marlene
Directing, Documentary Jon Foy for Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of Toynbee Tiles
Directing, World Cinema Paddy Considine for Tyrannosaur
Directing, Documentary World Cinema James Marsh for Project Nim
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award Another Happy Day
World Cinema Screenwriting Restoration
Special Jury Prize (Acting) Felicity Jones for Like Crazy
Special Jury Prize (Dramatic) Another Earth
Special Jury Prize (Documentary) Being Elmo
World Cinema Special Jury Prize (Documentary) Position Among the Stars
World Cinema Special Jury Prize (Dramatic) The Acting in Tyrannosaur

Martha Marcy May MarleneOther than Vera Farmiga's film -- which I'm interested in mostly because I'm crazy for crazy-eyed Farmiga -- the one I'm most personally curious about is Martha Marcy May Marlene which won for Best Director. Fox Searchlight bought it and they do get behind their films. The film is about a young girl (Elizabeth Olsen. Yes, younger sister to the Olsen Twins) trying to adjust to life after fleeing a religious cult. She moves in with her sister (Sarah Paulson -yay) and her sister's fiance (Hugh Dancy - double yay!). John Hawke is the cult leader (triple yay... for Hawkes's involvement not dangerous cult leaders). Olsen won strong reviews and the film sounds like intriguing.

Paddy Considine and Olivia Colman on the set of "Tyrannosaur"Also looking forward to seeing Tyrannosaur. It's about the relationship between a rage filled man (Peter Mullan) and an abused woman (Olivia Colman) but one of our favorite character actors Paddy Considine is directing and if the world cinema jury felt the need to honor both its acting and its directing, maybe it's special and not just gritty miserabilism.

Documentary Editing If a Tree Falls
World Cinema Documentary Editing The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Excellence in Cinematography, Dramatic Pariah
Excellence in Cinematography, Documentary The Redemption of General Butt Naked
World Cinema Cinematography All Your Dead Ones
World Cinema Cinematography, Documentary  Hell and Back Again
Alfred P Sloane Prize Another Earth directed by Mike Cahill
Sundance NHK International Filmmakers Award Cherien Davis
Jury Prize Short Filmmaking Brick novax Pt 1 & 2
Shorts Jury Honorable Mention: Choke by Michelle Latimer; Diarchy by Ferdinando Cito Filmomarioes; The External World by David O'Reilly; The Legend of Beaver Dam by Jerome Sable; Out of Reach by Jakub Stozek; Protoparticles by Chema García Ibarra

PariahFocus Features, who won The Kids Are All Right bidding war last year, also bought a lesbian film this year. Pariah, which won for cinematography, is about an African American teenager (played by Adepero Oduye) who is coming out of the closet in Brooklyn.

Audience Award
Dramatic Circumstance
Documentary Buck
World Cinema Kinyarwanda
World Documentary Senna
The Best of "NEXT" Audience Award to.get.her

CircumstanceLast year at Sundance the Dramatic Audience Award, Dramatic went to HappyThankYouMorePlease which was the writer/director debut of sitcom star Josh Radnor and surprise: it felt not unlike a sitcom. But the year before they chose Precious so you never know. This year's winner Circumstance is about an Iranian family struggling with rebellious teenagers.

Anything from Sundance 2011 interesting you from what you've read here or elsewhere?

Birthday Bale

Here's to Christian Bale, future Oscar winner (unless this King's Speech thing *really* gets out of hand), on his 37th birthday! He might even win the SAG Award tonight on his birthday.

It's hard to remember that he's not even 40 yet. He's been in the movies for so long!

Christian Bale, the 12 year old star of "Empire of the Sun"

Since that auspicious debut in Steven Spielberg's Empire (1987) which was nominated for 6 Oscars (but strangely didn't catch fire in any of the top categories, despite being a World War II epic) it's been quite a trip: He assisted a royal Oscar powerhouse (Henry V); ended his teenage years dancing (Swing Kids) and singing (Newsies); got curiously soft and swoony (Pocahontas, Little Women); was overcome by hormonal confusion in his mid 20s (Velvet Goldmine, Metroland, A Midsummer Night's Dream); played God and then the Devil back to back in his late 20s (Mary, Mother of Jesus & American Pyscho) as if to warn us, spiritually, of his physical yo-yoing to come; and then the films came fast and furious with the actor jumping genres and personas and body types left and right (Laurel Canyon, Reign of Fire, Equilibrium, The Machinist, Batman Begins, The New World, Rescue Dawn, The Prestige, I'm Not There, etcetera).

[gif source]

It's been hard to keep up with him. He's dancing as fast as he can through the cinema.

What's your favorite Bale performance?

Producer's Guild Loves Bertie, Disses Zuck

True Blood's Joe Mangianello presents an awardThe PGA (the producers not the golfers) have chosen The King's Speech as the best produced film of 2010. [Dumb joke] No word yet on which film the golfers prefer... maybe True Grit with all those wide open spaces or The Kids Are All Right with its landscaping subplot? [/Dumb joke] Stammering Bertie's win may come as a surprise to the producers of The Social Network who are very used to winning things for their exciting film about the billion dollar rise of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Why it's almost as if the Producers Guild have been reading all these speculative premature blog pieces "can TKS take it from TSN?" and decided that since they were producers of entertainment... they ought entertain by raising the stakes.

I'm not sure that this makes it a dead heat but it definitely raises one eyebrow. Que?

This Year's Prizes:
Theatrical Motion Picture: THE KING'S SPEECH
Animated Feature: TOY STORY 3
Documentary Feature: WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'
Episodic Television Comedy: MODERN FAMILY
Episodic Television Drama: MAD MEN (third consecutive win)
Longform Television: THE PACIFIC
Non-Fiction Television: DEADLIEST CATCH
Live Entertainment and Competition: Television THE COLBERT REPORT

and the honorary non-competition prizes
Milestone Award: JAMES CAMERON
Norman Lear Achievement (Television): TOM HANKS and GARY GOETZMAN
David O. Selznick Award (Film): SCOTT RUDIN
Visionary Awards LAURA ZISKIN
Stanley Kramer Award (which usually goes to a film, not a person): SEAN PENN

Amy Adams and Helen Mirren presenting...

For what it's worth...

here are the last 20 PGA winners and how they fared with Oscar
2009 The Hurt Locker (won)
2008 Slumdog Millionaire (won)
2007 No Country For Old Men (won)
2006 Little Miss Sunshine (lost)
2005 Brokeback Mountain (*sniffle*)
2004 The Aviator (lost)
2003 The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King (won)
2002 Chicago (won)
2001 Moulin Rouge! (lost which we knew it would but god bless them for going there.)
2000 Gladiator (won)
1999 American Beauty (won)
1998 Saving Private Ryan (lost)
1997 Titanic (won)
1996 The English Patient (won)
1995 Apollo 13 (lost)
1994 Forrest Gump (won)
1993 Schindler's List (won)
1992 The Crying Game (lost)
1991 The Silence of the Lambs (won)
1990 Dances With Wolves (won)
1989 Driving Miss Daisy (won -- this was the first year of the PGA prize)

Or, in the past 21 years, Oscar lines up 66% of the time. If you can find a pattern with the losers, you're my god. I can't see any patterns. All kinds of films win or lose, from big to small to American to British.

In other news: Amy Poehler and Justin Timberlake were there. Funny thing is, this is EXACTLY what happens when I talk* to Amy Poehler.

* ...and by "talk to" I mean watch her on Parks and Recreation. Aren't you glad that show is finally back?

What do you make of The King's Speech win here? A fluke or a real and present danger for Zuck and company come Oscar night?

9 Days 'til Nominations (Globe Predictions)

The countdown is progressing. Today's Topic: Golden Globe Predictions. (We'll be live-blogging starting with the arrivals 'round about 6:30 PMish.

So without further ado. Some predictions. We're predicting them in the order with which they appear on the Golden Globe site so as to save typing time!

Best Motion Picture - Drama
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The King's Speech
The Social Network

Should Win: The Social Network
Will Win: I think it's going to be The Social Network but the Globes are hard to predict since they aren't that worried about what Oscar might pick (yay! -- I hate predictions as votes). So I suppose we could see an upset from The King's Speech or even The Fighter?

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama
Halle Berry – Frankie and Alice
Nicole Kidman – Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence – Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman – Black Swan
Michelle Williams – Blue Valentine

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