SAG Awards Nominate ‘Barbie,’ ‘Oppenheimer,’ Snub DiCaprio

 Cillian Murphy attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, US, January 7, 2024. (Reuters)
Cillian Murphy attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, US, January 7, 2024. (Reuters)
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SAG Awards Nominate ‘Barbie,’ ‘Oppenheimer,’ Snub DiCaprio

 Cillian Murphy attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, US, January 7, 2024. (Reuters)
Cillian Murphy attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, US, January 7, 2024. (Reuters)

The 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards on Wednesday heaped nominations on "Oppenheimer,Barbie" and "American Fiction," while snubbing Leonardo DiCaprio for best male actor.

As they were at the Golden Globes, Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" were again the lead nominees. Each film picked up four nods including best ensemble. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were nominated for their performances in "Barbie," while Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt received nods for "Oppenheimer."

Barbenheimer continues to rule Hollywood's awards season, just as it did the summer box office.

Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction" got the biggest momentum boost, landing three nods: best ensemble, Jeffrey Wright for best male actor and Sterling K. Brown for supporting male actor.

Along with those three films, Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" and Blitz Bazawule's "The Color Purple" were nominated for best ensemble, the guild's top award.

Most notably left out of that group was Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things," which on Sunday won best comedy/musical at the Golden Globes. The film's star, Emma Stone, was nominated for best female actor while Willem Dafoe (but not Mark Ruffalo) was nominated for best supporting male actor.

But those were far from the only snubs in the nominations announced by Issa Rae, a co-star in both "Barbie" and "American Fiction," and Kumail Nanjiani on Instagram Live.

Nominated for best actor were Bradley Cooper ("Maestro"), Colman Domingo ("Rustin"), Paul Giamatti ("The Holdovers"), Murphy and Wright. DiCaprio had long been seen as a presumed nominee for his performance in Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon." Lily Gladstone, who is poised to potentially make history at the Oscars, was among the best female actor nominees, while Robert De Niro was nominated for best supporting male actor.

Todd Hayne's "May December" was completely shut out, as was Celine Song's tender love story, "Past Lives." Charles Melton, co-star of "May December," was expected to be among the supporting male actors. And neither Sandra Hüller ("Anatomy of a Fall") nor Fantasia Barrino ("The Color Purple") scored individual nominations.

Along with Gladstone and Stone, the nominees for best female actor are Carey Mulligan ("Maestro") and Annette Bening ("Nyad"). Bening's co-star, Jodie Foster, joined the supporting female actor category which also featured Da’Vine Joy Randolph ("The Holdovers"), Danielle Brooks ("The Color Purple") and Penélope Cruz for "Ferrari."

The SAG Awards are closely watched as an Oscar bellwether. Their picks don't always align exactly with those of the film academy, but seldom is a best picture or acting winner not nominated first by SAG. That means any best picture hopes for films like "Poor Things" just took a hit. "Past Lives," Celine Song's tender love story, also was set back.

The last two best-ensemble winners — "Everything Everywhere All at Once" and "CODA" — went on to win best picture at the Oscars.

This year’s SAG Awards follow a grueling 118-day strike by the actors guild SAG-AFTRA that put Hollywood in a months-long battle over its future. Pay in the streaming era and artificial intelligence were top issues.

In the television categories, the trio that nearly swept the Golden Globes — "Succession,The Bear" and "Beef" — were again among the lead nominees. "Succession" led all series with five nods (though Jeremy Strong was passed over), while "The Last of Us,Ted Lasso" and "The Bear" all collected four nominations.

The SAG Awards will take place Feb. 24 at the Shine Auditorium & Expo Hall in Los Angeles. Netflix will live stream the ceremony for the first time. Last year's awards were streamed on Netflix's YouTube account.

The show will mark one of Netflix's most notable forays into live programming. The streamer, which has for years been an awards season force, will first to play host, too, in the runup to the Academy Awards in March.

Barbra Streisand will receive the SAG Life Achievement Award.



Sundance Film Festival Hits Utah, One Last Time

From Hollywood's biggest stars to breakthrough newcomers, the cinema world has descended on Sundance. Valerie MACON / AFP/File
From Hollywood's biggest stars to breakthrough newcomers, the cinema world has descended on Sundance. Valerie MACON / AFP/File
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Sundance Film Festival Hits Utah, One Last Time

From Hollywood's biggest stars to breakthrough newcomers, the cinema world has descended on Sundance. Valerie MACON / AFP/File
From Hollywood's biggest stars to breakthrough newcomers, the cinema world has descended on Sundance. Valerie MACON / AFP/File

The first Sundance Film Festival since the death of founder Robert Redford begins in Park City Thursday -- the final time it will be held in the mountains of Utah.

Hollywood A-listers Olivia Wilde, Natalie Portman and Ethan Hawke are expected to walk the red carpet at the snowcapped Rocky Mountain resort, along with a host of lesser-known filmmakers at one of the most important gatherings in the global movie calendar.

Amy Redford, daughter of the "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" star who created the festival in 1978, said this year's get-together would be an emotional experience, just four months after her father's death.

"Very proud," she said, when asked how she felt about her father's legacy.

"He was somebody that created from the field, not from on high," she told AFP.

"He never meant to be the center of focus for this whole organization. The center of focus was always the storytellers."

Line-up

Among the dozens of feature-length films and documentaries on show over the coming days will be "The Invite" directed by and starring Wilde, opposite Seth Rogen and Edward Norton.

The script, co-written by Rashida Jones ("Parks and Recreation"), deals with a couple whose mysterious neighbors come over for dinner.

"Mad Men" stars Jon Hamm and John Slattery reunite in "Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass," where a Midwestern bride-to-be rampages through Hollywood in an effort to even the score after her fiance uses the couple's "free celebrity pass" on his famous crush.

In "The Gallerist" -- starring Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, along with Jenna Ortega and Sterling K. Brown -- a desperate curator tries to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami.

Among the most hotly anticipated non-celebrity films premiering at the festival is "The History of Concrete," a sideways look by John Wilson about how to sell a film about building materials.

A strong international lineup includes director Molly Manners debut feature "Extra Geography" from the UK and queer genre film "Leviticus" from Australia.

"Hanging by a Wire" tells the story of the nail-biting race to save schoolboys dangling from a stranded cable car in the Himalayan foothills.

"Hold On to Me" from Cyprus traces the efforts of an 11-year-old tracking down her estranged father, while documentary "Kikuyu Land" from Kenya examines how powerful outside forces use local corruption to dispossess a people.

All of them will offer something special, Amy Redford said.

"I think the look on the faces of people that premiere their films and realize they're looking out into an audience who understand what they were trying to say...it always just is kind of a stunning experience," she said.

Moving on

The festival moves next year to Boulder, Colorado, having outgrown its current host city.

For festival programmer John Nein, who has been at every edition since 1996, leaving Park City will be bittersweet.

"It's a special place," he told AFP.

"It's a place that has been so tied to how the festival works in terms of people coming to this place. It's not particularly convenient. It's really cold."

"But in a weird way, that's what brings people here and it's what creates the audience that we have here. So I feel like that's part of what made it special."

Festival director Eugene Hernandez said the Sundance Institute will continue to have roots in Utah, even as the festival moves to Colorado.

But this year's program will be one to remember.

"There's going to be a lot of laughter, there will probably also be some tears, there will be joy, there will be connection, there will be community," he said.

"I think those are all aspects that make a festival."


Brooklyn Beckham Accuses David and Victoria of Putting Branding Before Family and Sabotaging Wedding

03 September 2019, United Kingdom, London: David Beckham (L), Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham arrive at the GQ Men of the Year Awards 2019 in association with Hugo Boss at the Tate Modern. (dpa)
03 September 2019, United Kingdom, London: David Beckham (L), Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham arrive at the GQ Men of the Year Awards 2019 in association with Hugo Boss at the Tate Modern. (dpa)
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Brooklyn Beckham Accuses David and Victoria of Putting Branding Before Family and Sabotaging Wedding

03 September 2019, United Kingdom, London: David Beckham (L), Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham arrive at the GQ Men of the Year Awards 2019 in association with Hugo Boss at the Tate Modern. (dpa)
03 September 2019, United Kingdom, London: David Beckham (L), Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham arrive at the GQ Men of the Year Awards 2019 in association with Hugo Boss at the Tate Modern. (dpa)

A Beckham family falling-out has spilled further into public view in a series of social media posts from Brooklyn Beckham alleging that his parents David and Victoria Beckham have tried to sabotage his marriage and have always prioritized public branding over their family relationships.

“For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family. The performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships have been a fixture of the life I was born into,” Brooklyn Beckham wrote in several pages of text posted via Instagram stories.

At 26, he's the eldest of the four children of the retired English football superstar and former Spice Girl-turned-fashion designer and has worked as a model and photographer, even aspiring to be a chef. He married American actor Nicola Peltz, daughter of activist investor Nelson Peltz, in 2022.

“Recently, I have seen with my own eyes the lengths that they’ll go through to place countless lies in the media, mostly at the expense of innocent people, to preserve their own facade. But I believe the truth always comes out,” the posts said.

The posts make public a barely veiled feud that had been brewing in anonymously sourced stories in tabloids for months. Younger brother Cruz Beckham said on Instagram in December that Brooklyn had blocked family members on social media.

“I do not want to reconcile with my family.” Brooklyn Beckham wrote. “I’m not being controlled, I’m standing up for myself for the first time in my life.”

Unlike his three younger siblings, Brooklyn Beckham did not appear in his mother's recent Netflix docuseries, “Victoria Beckham,” and did not show up at the October premiere as he and Peltz had for the London premiere in 2023 of the one centered on his father, called just “Beckham."

Many of the grievances described in the Instagram stories stem from the Peltz-Beckham wedding in Florida. He accused his mother of bailing at the last minute on designing Peltz's wedding dress, and said she “hijacked” the first dance he was supposed to have with his wife to music performed by Marc Anthony.

“She danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone,” Brooklyn Beckham wrote. “I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life.”

Without giving specifics he also wrote that before the wedding his parents “repeatedly pressured and attempted to bribe me into signing away the rights to my name.”

David and Victoria Beckham did not have an immediate public response to the posts, and messages to representatives from The Associated Press were not immediately answered.

In a Tuesday appearance on CNBC, David Beckham, who is at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, did not directly address his son's statements, but said that children make mistakes on social media and should be allowed to.

“That’s what I try to teach my kids. But you know, you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well,” he said.

Married since 1999, David and Victoria Beckham have three other children, 23-year-old Romeo, 20-year-old Cruz and 14-year-old Harper.


‘Snow White’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ Lead Razzie Nominations

Cast member Rachel Zegler attends a premiere for the film "Snow White", in Los Angeles, California, US, March 15, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member Rachel Zegler attends a premiere for the film "Snow White", in Los Angeles, California, US, March 15, 2025. (Reuters)
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‘Snow White’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ Lead Razzie Nominations

Cast member Rachel Zegler attends a premiere for the film "Snow White", in Los Angeles, California, US, March 15, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member Rachel Zegler attends a premiere for the film "Snow White", in Los Angeles, California, US, March 15, 2025. (Reuters)

With Oscar nominations a day away, Hollywood’s annual reckoning with its film failures took shape on ​Wednesday as Disney’s live-action “Snow White” and the remake “War of the Worlds” tied for six nods for the Golden Raspberry Awards.

Popularly known as the Razzies, the awards are an annual Oscar spoof that spotlights what voters deem Hollywood’s worst performances. The 46th ‌Golden Raspberry ‌Awards are set for ‌March 14, ⁠the ​day ‌before the Oscar awards.

Disney’s "Snow White," a 2025 remake of the 1937 animated classic, scored a worst picture nod along with nominations for worst remake, director and screenplay. The fantasy film stars Rachel Zegler as Snow White ⁠and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, and its seven ‌computer-generated dwarf characters were ‍also cited for both ‍worst supporting actors and screen combo.

Tying with “Snow ‍White,” the 2025 science fiction film "War of the Worlds," starring rapper Ice Cube and actor Eva Longoria, based on H. G. Wells' 1898 ​novel, also scored six nominations, including worst picture, actors, remake, director, screenplay and screen ⁠combo.

Other nominees include the psychological thriller “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” science fiction film “Star Trek: Section 31,” and the action-adventure Netflix film “The Electric State,” starring “Stranger Things” lead Millie Bobby Brown.

More than 1,100 Razzie members from across the United States and about two dozen other countries vote on the awards, according to the Razzie website. Voters are members of the Golden Raspberry Foundation ‌that consists of film critics and movie experts.