Sometimes I really struggle to decide if I should tweet a link to my blog entry, or simply post it as a Facebook status update. And then I remember my relatives died in concentration camps.
Yeah, tough decisions. I had to make one of two of them yesterday, when I cast my ballot for the 2013 SAG Awards. There are 15 categories, so I figured I’d break my results in half and share them today and tomorrow. Up first:
Lead Male in a Film. Bradley Cooper was incredible in
Silver Linings Playbook, battling mental illness in a really tricky role. Meanwhile, Daniel Day-Lewis turned down
Lincoln many times (Spielberg almost then went with Liam Neeson), and it occurred to me why he didn’t want to do it: when Daniel accepts a role, he goes all in, taking months to inhabit the character, and he didn’t want to play Abe unless he was fully committed in his own self-masochistic way. He wins.
Lead Female in a Film. I’m sure Bin Laden would be thrilled to know a woman was the operative most responsible for him buying it. A guy in
Zero Dark Thirty calls Jessica Chastain’s Maya “a killer.” She’s an action hero, brilliant strategist, emotional patriot, and she’s smokin’ hot. Award winner.
Supporting Male in a Film. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is mortified about having to sing, and yet he embraced singing and prancing to a room full of naked women in one crazy scene of
The Master. And in another, he and Joaquin Phoenix went head-to-head so intensely that it made me either want to work harder at my craft, or give up on the business.
Supporting Female in a Film. After being married to Mary Todd Lincoln for 23 years, getting your head blown off must feel like sweet relief. And yet, Sally Field gave some depth and kindness to the woman – she was a mother grieving over her lost son. I voted for her. I really, really voted for her.
Outstanding Stunt Ensemble in a Film. Yes, it’s perhaps the weirdest category of any award show, but I’m not one to abstain.
Skyfall was one of the best films of the year, loaded with cool action sequences, and… and… wait –
Les Misérables nominated for action/stunts? Sorry,
Avengers…
Outstanding Cast in a Film. Now this is a category that only the SAG Awards features, and I love it. Let’s honor entire casts as a team. I thought
Argo had the most actors with the most range, from Ben Affleck’s stoic coolness to John Goodman and Alan Arkin’s comedy stealing every scene to ease the tension. Argo eff this category.
Male Actor in a TV Movie. There’s a moment in
Game Change, after it’s clear that Sarah Palin thinks the Queen of England runs the country and is in charge of the British armed forces, that we can see in Woody Harrelson’s character Steve Schmidt’s eyes that he bet on the
wrong horse. He had me at this moment.
Female Actor in a TV Movie. Sarah Palin is so vile that I didn’t even want to watch a scathing depiction of her. But Julianne Moore’s portrayal of the paranoid, phony, uneducated skank was magnetic. Can I vote twice?
Coming tomorrow: more awards. Or, why my TV addiction is tax deductible.
