âCODAâ team crying again ... but tears of joy
![Troy Kotsur holds his supporting actor SAG trophy.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/12fed3d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4866x3225+0+0/resize/1200x795!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffa%2Fe6%2F5deeb3574e7ab685ce388e49e2c7%2F922714-la-et-28th-annual-sag-awards-red-carpet-391922714-la-et-28th-annual-sag-awards-red-carpet-563.jpg)
Baseball owners may have canceled opening day. Apparently, though, Dodger Stadium now has an accredited botanic garden that I can visit. Can I buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack â and a $15 beer â while strolling the grounds?
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Also, weâre a few days removed from the Screen Actors Guild Awards. You think the âCODAâ team has stopped celebrating yet? Iâm Glenn Whipp, awards columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelopeâs Friday newsletter and the guy happy to eat his share of purple sea urchins if it helps our kelp forests. (Maybe they could start an urchin stand at Dodger Stadium once baseball resumes?)
âCODAâ takes SAG Awardsâ big prize
Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin put nuclear forces on alert. But, to quote the inimitable Martin Short near the start of Sundayâs Screen Actors Guild Awards, âLetâs get on with doing Godâs work and give another actor an award.â
Awards season is back! The exclamation point comes courtesy of the telecastâs announcer, looking to gin up a little excitement for a ceremony that returned Sunday to being an in-person event a year after its winners Zoomed in with prerecorded acceptance speeches.
Did the evening earn its exclamation point? If you watched âSquid Gameâ on Netflix through splayed fingers, the answer is: Yes! The blockbuster South Korean survival drama won honors for actors Lee Jung-Jae and Jung Ho-yeon. âSquid Gameâ also won for stunt ensemble.
Is it too late to nominate it for best picture?
It was also a good night for the Apple TV+ crowd-pleaser âCODA,â which won the film ensemble award and a supporting actor honor for Troy Kotsur. Do the wins improve its standing at the Oscars? I took a look at how the evening â a pretty reliable precursor of individual acting honors â might impact the Academy Awards.
![A line of men and women holding up SAG award statuettes.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/049c713/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5472x3648+0+0/resize/1200x800!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fad%2Fc3%2F4fbf061e41979750d52651a58514%2F922723-la-et-28th-annual-sag-awards-photo-room-1138-2880420.jpg)
Lead actress Oscar still up for grabs
The only certainty when it comes to this yearâs lead actress Oscar race is that there is no certainty. And there wonât be until the envelope is opened and the winnerâs name is read at the ceremony on March 27.
None of the nominees appeared in a movie nominated for best picture. One, Kristen Stewart from âSpencer,â earned her filmâs sole nomination. Three of the women â Olivia Colman, PenĂ©lope Cruz and Nicole Kidman â already have an Oscar, though that was not an impediment last year when Frances McDormand won her third lead actress trophy (and second in four years) for âNomadland.â
Voters and awards consultants call me nearly every day making an argument for their favorite nominee (or client, as the case may be). Could any one of the five women nominated for lead actress win? Judging from these conversations, yes. But this is Hollywood, a place where imagination is often divorced from reality. So I burrowed into this category in a recent column, looking for answers. (Even after Chastainâs SAG Awards win, Iâm still a little iffy on her chances.)
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âI bared my soul and my ass as wellâ
Benedict Cumberbatch knows you have questions about that âPower of the Dogâ ending. He has questions too. Maybe theyâre the same ones. But before he dives in â and this is a man prone to picking apart and parsing, so settle in â Cumberbatch would like to make a statement. Before we hand him the floor, it should go without saying that if you havenât seen âThe Power of the Dog,â which has been available for months now, you should not be reading this story because weâre going to be talking about the ending that everyone has been discussing and dissecting since the end of, ahem, last year.
Now that we have that out of the way, Cumberbatch would like to say that he very much hopes you felt bad when his character, the menacing, hyper-masculine cattle rancher Phil Burbank, dies at the end of the movie. He doesnât expect that you broke down weeping or anything. (Phil wouldnât want that.)
But Cumberbatch thinks people are taking juuuuust a bit too much pleasure in Philâs death.
We talked about that and a great many other things over lunch recently, a conversation that, yes, led to the quote in the headline above. And youâll have to read the whole story to understand why that quote made the headline.
Feedback?
Iâd love to hear from you. Email me at glenn.whipp@latimes.com.
Canât get enough about awards season? Follow me at @glennwhipp on Twitter.
From the Oscars to the Emmys.
Get the Envelope newsletter for exclusive awards season coverage, behind-the-scenes stories from the Envelope podcast and columnist Glenn Whippâs must-read analysis.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.