Screen Actor's Guild Award Nominations

This year's SAG nominations... are all over the place. Wow, I'm not even sure where some of the voters pulled some of these nominees out from.

According to In Contention's Kris Tapley, the strangeness of these nominations might have to do with the incredibly early deadline voters were sidelined with this year, though I'm still puzzled. Absolutely no love for Ridley Scott's, "The Martian" (though that will surely change come tomorrow's announcement from the Golden Globes), and a complete last minute surge from Helen Mirren, with TWO nominations for utterly forgettable roles.

"Spotlight" only managed two nominations: one in the predicted ensemble category, and another for Rachel McAdams who has been largely absent from precursor awards thus far. "Trumbo," featuring Mirren and Bryan Cranston, received three nominations after being critically shrugged off and forgotten about.

"Room" didn't manage an ensemble nomination, but it did land two for Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. The latter really needed this to be taken seriously in a very crowded field. If he gets in tomorrow with the Golden Globes, I think he's in for an Oscar nomination. And "Beasts of No Nation" showed strength as well. Netflix must be breathing a sigh of relief. Again, if it shows up tomorrow with the Globes, it should be taken seriously as a viable contender.

I think a lot of these nominations are largely irrelevant, however, and based purely on early buzz and the campaigning.

See the full list of nominees below.

First Round of Industry & Critics' Awards: What Do They Tell Us?

It's that time of the year. After consistent guessing and predicting, we are finally starting to get a look at what films truly have the heat going into the Oscar race... at least for right now.

With the Independent Spirit Awards announcing their nominees last week, the Gotham Awards awarding their winners a few days ago, and now announcements from The National Board of Review and The New York Film Critics Circle, things are starting to fall in place... well sort of.

To be fair, these precursors do not decide the Oscars. If you remember back in 2010 when "The Social Network" won every critics award for Best Picture there was, and then went on to lose the Producer's Guild, SAG Ensemble Award and the Oscar, that fact is all too clear in your mind. But again, why these awards are important is because they show what films have heat and what films don't. They can sometimes translate into Oscar success ("The Artist" in 2011, for example) but in a mixed bag of a year like this one, where there is no clear consensus, it's a total toss up.

So, let's examine the first round of winners, shall we?

"Brooklyn" Is Old School Hollywood Magic

Author Colin Toibin wrote in his novel, "Brooklyn" that his protagonist Ellis Lacey and her family could, "do everything except say out loud what they were thinking." In the film adaptation of that same novel, Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan makes this aspect of her character incredibly clear through her incredibly textured performance. Over the course of the movie's near two hour running time, we see the evolution and growth of a young woman in an unfamiliar land play out beautifully across her expressive face.

State of the Oscar Race

The Toronto Film Festival may be over, but awards season is just getting started. A bunch of potential Oscar players made a splash to the delight of critics and bloggers everywhere.

There were some notable surprises, but nothing that truly bombed; save for a few films, the big names more or less performed how they were expected to.

And then there were some films (the Rooney Mara/Cate Blanchett drama "Carol" for one) that decided to skip the festival altogether. That hardly matters; With Harvey Weinstein behind you, your film is assured some kind of nomination.

Here are a few of the biggest takeaways post-TIFF; Where do the current players stand?

It's Never too Early to Look Ahead

After playing a witch in last year's "Into the Woods", Meryl is looking to break her own record as a rock star mom in "Ricki and the Flash" 

Last year's Oscar season just barely ended, and it's already time to start looking ahead at the race that's already starting to form for this year. Though none of the actual contenders have actually premiered to the public yet (unless you count the gorgeous costumes from "Cinderella") there's a slew of buzzy titles with huge names that have people talking.

With nothing at the theaters really holding our attention at the moment, it's never too early to look ahead at what's to come.