SAG Awards

The results of the SAG Awards are in. The four individual acting awards all went to the frontrunners in their respective categories. But the "ensemble acting" award, the closest thing the SAG has to a Best Picture award, went to Little Miss Sunshine, bypassing The Departed, which many hoped would take it. That makes the second major guild win for Little Miss Sunshine, as it won the PGA earlier. The DGA and WGA will chime in over the next couple weeks.

Normally, about three of SAG's four individual acting awards line up with Oscar's acting awards. But the SAG Ensemble matched Oscar's Best Picture only five times in the last ten years, although it did go to Crash last year, when all the other precursor awards were going to Brokeback Mountain. The thing to remember about the actors is that they make up the largest branch of the Academy, a bit over 20% of its membership. They aren't the same actors in the Academy and the Guild -- the Academy includes only the most accomplished actors in the field -- but the voice of the acting branch carries a lot of weight.