Oscar buzz grows for Star is Born
A Star Is Born led nominations for the 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards with four nods including best ensemble yesterday, firmly establishing Bradley Cooper’s romantic revival as this year’s Academy Awards front runner.
The actors’ guild — one of the most predictive bellwethers of the Oscars — threw cold water on the awards campaigns of numerous contenders while elevating others. But A Star Is Born fared the best of all, landing nominations for Cooper (best male actor), Lady Gaga (best female actor) and Sam Elliott (best supporting male actor).
The other nominees for the group’s top award, best ensemble, were: Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, BlacKkKlansman and Crazy Rich Asians.
That category is the most closely watched of the Screen Actors Guild (Sag) Awards because only once in the last two decades has the eventual Oscars best picture winner not been nominated for best ensemble at the Sag Awards. The one aberration, though, was last year, when Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water overcame the Sag omission on its way to winning best picture.
Unless a new trend is forming, that’s bad news for Oscar hopefuls like Vice, Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic (which led last week’s Golden Globe nominations); Alfonso Cuaron’s Netflix drama Roma (the choice of critics groups); and the 1962 road trip Green Book.