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• Best Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy [and..... Oscar.]
• Nice tribute to the great Julie Andrews
• I don't even watch Grey's Anatomy, but great speech by surprise winner Chandra Wilson
  
• Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson [and..... Oscar.]
  
• Best Actor: Forest Whitaker [and..... weak speech... but, barring a major O'Toole push... Oscar.]
  
• Best Actress: Helen Mirren [and..... duh.]
  
• Best Ensemble: LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE!!! [and..... ?]

The Screen Actors Guild Awards will be handed out on Sunday night. I'm excited to hear from my friend Don LaFontaine, the great voice of movie trailers for as long as they've been around (and now the star of Geico commercials), that he and several other voiceover artists will be the focus of a special segment--it is well-deserved recognition for often overlooked--albeit overcompensated--talent. But I digress...

The nominees are:

The SAG Awards are determiend by over 100,000 unionized actors who seem to want to celebrate not only those who have done great work, but especially those who take equally great pride in the craft of acting and the life of an actor. Considering those demographics, a few things have been in the back of my mind as I project the results...

• Will Eddie Murphy (Dreamgirls), the clear favorite for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, prevail in that same category here? He historically is not known to be the nicest or most liked guy, and so he may not have as many friends who are casting ballots as, say, his chief competition, namely Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine), who has been around the business for four decades. In this case, I'm going out on a limb and predicting the upset. (This, of course, would be another painful blow to the Dreamgirls campaign, who I harbor no ill-will against... I just have a feeling.)
  
• Murphy's co-star, Jennifer Hudson, is also the hands-down favorite for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. While nobody can question her pipes--her rendition of "And I Am Telling You Now" is still generating standing ovations--her lack of experience as an actor (which she acknowledged in her Golden Globes victory speech) may make some think twice. If she had a serious rival, I might pick an upset for that reason, but let's face it--Kikuchi and Barazza are gonna cancel out any chance they ever had; Blanchett has many loyal admirers, but it's an uphill climb; and then there's young Abigail Breslin, perhaps Hudson's biggest threat... but she, too, is a relative ingenue, so she faces the same problem as Hudson. In the end, Hudson should prevail.
• How does The Departed, with such an all-star cast, not win Best Ensemble, SAG's closest thing to Best Picture? Well, it's tough to bet against it, but I'm going to have to base my pick on past winners--great films like Traffic, Gosford Park, and Sideways that may not be typical Academy fare, but genuinely represent a bunch of actors rolling up their sleeves, getting together, getting dirty, and producing great work. This year, I feel like Little Miss Sunshine most closely fits this mold. It is far closer to an experience that most SAG voters can relate to--a small movie, a small budget, inexperienced directors, a few stars but mainly 'actor's actors,' and all-in-all a risky venture--than a Martin Scorsese prestige film packed with stars. I could very easily be wrong, but that's my gut. We'll see... tune in.

So, bottom line? I'm predicting:

Best Ensemble: Little Miss Sunshine
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland)
Best Actress: Helen Mirren (The Queen)
Best Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine)
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls)