Alejandro G. Inarritu’s ode to actors had a mixed weekend. While Birdman soared with two big wins, its shocking loss last night made one of the sure bets look a little shaky today.
On Saturday, the film won the Producers Guild of America’s top award, the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures. That’s one of the key prizes on the road to the Academy Awards. Last year, Gravity and 12 Years A Slave tied, with 12 Years eventually winning the Best Picture Oscar. The last time the PGA winner didn’t win the Oscar was 2006, when Little Miss Sunshine took the prize instead of The Departed.
Then, last night, the film won Outstanding Performance by a cast, with members of the Academy’s largest branch recognizing the masterful ensemble that made up the film.
However, star Michael Keaton ended up losing the Leading Actor award to The Theory of Everything’s Eddie Redmayne, whose performance as Stephen Hawking is clearly striking a chord. Sure, the movie isn’t great, but his performance is definitely the reason to watch.
Julianne Moore (Still Alice), J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) and Patricia Arquette (Boyhood) won their awards last night, so they are still in good shape for the Oscars.
Heading into the awards season, Keaton sounded like a sure bet to win the Best Actor Oscar, but this really shakes things up. While the SAG’s top prize isn’t a great predictor (last year’s winner was American Hustle, not 12 Years), the guild is remarkably good at predicting the individual acting Oscars.
Last year, all four individual SAG winners repeated at the Oscars. Even more remarkable is the fact that you have to go back to 2003 for the last time that the SAG Best Actor winner wasn’t the Oscar Best Actor winner. (That year, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl’s Johnny Depp beat eventual Oscar winner Sean Penn of Mystic River.)
In total, since the SAG Awards started in 1994, only four SAG Best Actors have lost the Best Actor Oscar. That’s an incredible track record.
For an awards season that seemed so clearly in favor of Boyhood at the start, things just got really interesting. It is worth noting that Birdman didn’t have to compete with American Sniper, Selma or Whiplash at the SAG Awards and the PGA also didn’t nominated Selma. Plus, the top SAG prize isn’t for Best Picture, but for the best performance by a group of actors.
image courtesy of Jennifer Graylock/INFphoto.com
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