Oh,
Oscar
! Oscar, are you listening? I'm not just talking about any Oscar, of course, but little statuette fella Oscar, who should have been interested to hear the Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations that were announced Thursday morning. For those interested in Hollywood handicapping, the SAGs often foretell who will win an Academy Award. At the top of the SAG heap this year are the British drama
The King's Speech
and the boxing pic
The Fighter
, each of which had four nods.
Colin Firth
scored a best-actor nomination for his role in
The King's Speech
as
King George VI
, who battles a speech impediment. Other
King's
nominees include
Helena Bonham Carter
and
Geoffrey Rush
in supporting roles. The remaining film lead-actor nominees were
Jeff Bridges
(don't go getting greedy, Jeffie, just because you finally won an Oscar last year!) for
True Grit
,
Robert Duvall
for
Get Low
,
The Social Network
's
Jesse Eisenberg
, and sometime soap opera bad dude (he excels at being villainous on
General Hospital
) actor
James Franco
for
127 Hours
. Ye gads! Left out is the gritty-yet-glam
Mark Wahlberg
of
The Fighter
fame. Missing, too, is
Leonardo DiCaprio,
who starred in
Inception
and
Shutter Island
. I am stumped by these omissions, yet decline to spend time unraveling them.
She-nominees are Annette Bening from The Kids Are All Right, Rabbit Hole's Nicole Kidman, Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman for The Black Swan, and Hilary Swank for Conviction. Those movies also include the best ensemble nominees. Catching breath, catching breath. . . . Then there are the TV SAG nominees, which, of course, as all the TV-watching world could have guessed, are dominated by Modern Family and Glee. Also tapped for possible honors - 30 Rock and Hot in Cleveland, along with Hot's hot senior sage and star, Betty White. Yeah, yeah, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, The Closer, Dexter, and The Good Wife also were nominated for best drama, with their stars and celebs from other shows (Jon Hamm, Hugh Laurie, Michael C. Hall, Glenn Close, Mariska Hargitay, etc., etc.) nominated for various lead and supporting awards. How can the sparkling Steve Buscemi not win for his role in Boardwalk Empire, will you tell me that? SAG trivia: Did you know Julianna Margulies of The Good Wife is SAG's winningest winner with seven wins, if we are to believe TV Guide - and why wouldn't we? She's in the hunt again for drama queen.
Talk therapy
Actor
David Arquette
can't stop talking about his breakup with estranged wife
Courteney Cox.
He went on
Howard Stern
's Sirius XM radio show Wednesday - for the third time - to talk about his uncoupling. "I've been drinking a lot," he said. "But I don't want to go into all that, because it's really a personal, traumatic thing." Then, he went on to talk about the personal, traumatic fact that his Dr. Head thinks he's having a "nervous breakdown."
Nibbles and bits
Nick Cannon, 30, announced on his radio show Thursday that he and his good wife, Mariah Carey, 40, are going to have not one little sapling, but twins! Two little Marianicks! . . . Prosecutors in Connecticut (how great is it for gossipteers when an item starts that way?) say actor Rip Torn, 79, who like so many other lawbreaking celebrities takes a lousy mug shot, pleaded guilty this week "to charges stemming from allegations he broke into a Connecticut bank while drunk and armed," the Associated Press reports. . . . Here's hoping for a healthy holiday for Aretha Franklin. Doctors at a Detroit hospital this week discharged Franklin, 68, after she underwent surgery deemed successful for her reported fight with pancreatic cancer.