Oscar Podcast #49: The State of the Race Post-Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild

With two of the three major guilds (PGA and SAG) having announced their winners, Gold Rush Gang member Júlia and I break down what the winners mean in terms of the Oscar race.

From the surprise wins for Hidden Figures and Denzel Washington (Fences) at the Screen Actors Guild to La La Land‘s march to an easy win at PGA, there’s actually a lot to talk about.

We start with the PGA and its correlation to Oscar’s Best Picture and where we now see Hidden Figures in that race. Then it’s on to Supporting Actor where we wax poetic on Mahershala Ali’s speech (lots of swooning here) and Viola Davis (Fences) as she steamrolls through the season and her competition. Best Actress is next, where Emma Stone (La La Land) stands alone as the frontrunner but who is next – Portman or Huppert? I detail why Portman might not be the #2 people think she is and why I think she lost. Next is Best Actor, which threw us a big left turn. Is Denzel Washington the new frontrunner or was he all along? Finally, we talk at length about the win for Hidden Figures for SAG’s top award.

READ: 2017 Oscar Predictions – Post-Producers Guild, Screen Actors Guild

We close with predictions for next weekend’s Directors Guild of America (DGA) awards and the impact on the Foreign Language Film race from the Trump administration’s devastating anti-Muslim ban in regards to Iran’s The Salesman and its director, Asghar Farhadi.

This podcast runs just over one hour.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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