KEY POINTS:
LOS ANGELES - It is a question sometimes asked with scorn in the film industry: Who cares what actors think? Right now, the answer is maybe all of Hollywood.
The 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards tomorrow have assumed more importance than usual this year because a surprise snub of a major film at the Oscar nominations created a wide open race for best picture.
This means that the SAG awards, normally a clubby affair that never receives terribly high ratings, have a chance to make a difference in the key battle at the Feb. 25 Oscars.
The same thing happened last year when SAG actors chose Crash over the heavy favourite Brokeback Mountain for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture. Crash then went on to win the Oscar for best picture.
SAG members this year get to choose between five films for best ensemble performance in a motion picture: Babel, Bobby, The Departed, Dreamgirls and Little Miss Sunshine.
By omitting Dreamgirls from its list of films nominated for best picture, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sent shock waves through the industry.
Many experts expected Dreamgirls to not only get nominated but to win the Oscar for best picture.
Now the experts are looking to the Screen Actors Guild for guidance.
SAG voters will not necessarily go for Dreamgirls. SAG members form the biggest voting bloc among Oscar voters and one can assume that Dreamgirls would have won a nomination for best picture if it had strong actor support.
This leaves four films, of which three are rated with the best chance of winning the top SAG award -- The Departed, Babel and Little Miss Sunshine. Bobby, a tale of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, which received poor reviews and did badly at the box office, but has plenty of winning performances.
Babel, a tale of the globalisation of pain and suffering, was shot in four countries in five languages with few professional actors. One of its performers is up for best supporting actress, Rinko Kikuchi.
The Departed, a cops and robbers film directed by Martin Scorsese, features a cast of Hollywood heavyweights, including Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio.
And Little Miss Sunshine boasts an actors' dream story -- it took six years to get made and stars a host of dedicated journeymen burning up the screen. For SAG members, those actors' stories could be their own.
The front-runner in the race for best actor is Forest Whitaker, who plays the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Leading the contest for best actress is British veteran Helen Mirren for her work as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.
Both are considered shoo-ins for victory and losses could create waves.
Jennifer Hudson, the singer who is brutally cut loose in Dreamgirls, and Eddie Murphy, who plays a singer going from riches to rags in the same film are favoured to win the best supporting actor awards.
- REUTERS
