The Oscars have come and gone, but the season for giving big awards hasn’t ended quite yet. Up to dispense the accolades last Sunday, January 29 was the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Much like the Golden Globes, the SAG has awards for film and television; the biggest difference being that as this is the guild awarding its own members, the awards ceremony has no dedicated host, only presenters. From a certain point of view, the giving out of SAG Awards comes across like a pat on each other’s backs, with this year having the added element of doing the in thing in the movie industry by throwing shade at President Donald Trump’s administration.
The winners
It’s been pretty much expected that the same nominees and some of the winners from past award ceremonies will figure prominently here. One the motion picture side the period drama “Fences” was nominated for three categories; two of which, for lead actor and supporting actress, got SAGs for Denzel Washington and Viola Davis respectively. The ever flighty “La La Land” does it again with Emma Stone as the outstanding lead actress. The ‘outstanding performance by a cast’ in movies meanwhile went to “Hidden Figures,” a biographical drama that like “Fences,” focused on the lives of African Americans in past decades. The World War II drama “Hacksaw Ridge” meanwhile gets nods from the Screen Actors Guild for film stunt work.
Over on television, the multi-awardee of the night is Netflix series “The Crown,” with outstanding performances for male and female actors in a drama series, namely for John Lithgow as Winston Churchill and Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II. When it comes to outstanding performances by ensembles, SAGs went to the casts of “Stranger Things” for drama series (they got called on as presenters a lot during the ceremony), “Orange is the New Black” for comedy, and “Game of Thrones” for stunt work.
Most importantly, the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award of the year went to Lily Tomlin for her near six decades on the business.
Sympathy for travel ban 'victims.'
A great deal of the Screen Actors Guild Awards night also went into calling out President Trump’s recent executive order slapping a travel ban to and from seven countries in the Middle East marked as terrorist sanctuaries or state sponsors.
Mahersala Ali, film supporting actor SAG winner spoke very eloquently on the subject and its perception as a US ban on Muslims, relating how his ordain minister mother was once upset at his conversion to Islam but has since moved from it and continues to accept him. Ashton Kutcher, who opened the ceremonies, greeted the numerous travelers currently stranded at airports all over the nation due to the ban, saying they belong in “his” America.
