Tonight, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) will host the 14th annual SAG Awards. This is “the awards show where only actors vote,” as the program’s promoters like to say, and that is true—4,200 members of the actors union were randomly selected to choose the nominees, but now the entire dues-paying membership of 120,000 actors will have the final say on the winners. For this reason, a win of “the Actor,” as the SAG Award is called, tends to be the most meaningful honor for an actor short of an Oscar.

It is also a particularly meaningful award for prognosticators because the choices of SAG—excluding their Best Ensemble category—tend to be the strongest indicator of who the Academy will choose to recognize down the road. Indeed, 1,243 of the Academy’s 5,829 members (just over 23%) belong to the Actors branch, indicating a substantial overlap and commonality of preferences. In reality, SAG does not always match up perfectly with the eventual Oscar winners, they tend to go at least two or three for four.

Here is who I’m projecting to win tonight, along with a short explanation…

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A CAST
Nominees
(1) Into the Wild (Paramount Vantage)
(2) No Country for Old Men (Miramax)
(3) Hairspray (New Line)
(4) American Gangster (Universal)
(5) 3:10 to Yuma (Lionsgate)
RATIONALE Into the Wild is an actors showcase, featuring an ensemble of well-known and well-liked talents, which is the driving force behind this call. SAG clearly responded to the film better (a leading four nominations) than the Academy (only one acting nod and no Best Pic nod), which is somewhat troubling since the winner of this category has gone on to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture every year except 1996 (The Birdcage), but as I’ve said all along this seems like an unusual year in which some rules are going to be broken, so that might happen again. No Country for Old Men is the most Academy-embraced of the five options and could very well pull it off, especially considering that SAG nominated both Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones whereas the Academy opted only for Bardem, but that may not indicate anything—after all, Michael Clayton scored three acting nods but did not show up in this category. My guess is that No Country is not enough of an ensemble piece for some voters. Hairspray might be, but is also rather grating for a lot of people, and the absence of nominations for any of its actors is not a promising sign. Gangster, meanwhile, snagged a spot with only one acting nod, and Yuma with none, so those have to be regarded as long shots.

BEST ACTOR
Nominees
(1) Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
(2) Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild)
(3) Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)
(4) George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
(5) Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl)
RATIONALE Day-Lewis is almost certainly the active actor most revered by his other actors, and deservedly so. He only works every few years, but when he does he always crafts a remarkably complex and nuanced performance. The last time he made a major awards contender was Gangs of New York (2002), and he won the SAG Award even though the Academy took a pass; this time he will probably snag both. There is nobody in this year’s field whose performance or stature is on the same plain, so it is nearly impossible to see anyone else mustering enough support to take him down. Hirsch and Gosling did fine work and will probably be forces for a long time to come. Mortensen is probably too quiet and understated, both on screen and off, to have called the necessary attention to himself. Clooney is not, and is probably the biggest threat, but it’s all relative—at the recent Newsweek roundtable, even he effectively bowed before Day-Lewis.

BEST ACTRESS
Nominees
(1) Ellen Page (Juno)
(2) Julie Christie (Away from Her)
(3) Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose)
(4) Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
(5) Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart)
RATIONALE What are the movies that every voters has made it a priority to see? I don’t know the full list, but I do know that Juno is on it, and that Away from Her, La Vie En Rose, Elizabeth, and A Mighty Heart are not. This is probably going to matter when you’re asking 120,000 people to vote for Best Actress—more will have seen and, in all likelihood, liked Page than any of the other nominees, and certainly more than the finite groups that have already voted, like the Hollywood Foreign Press (who embraced fellow foreigner Cotillard) and Broadcast Film Critics (who opted for the critics’ ‘darling,’ pardon the pun, Christie). That said, it seems somewhat odd that Juno did not receive any other acting nominations or a Best Ensemble nomination even though its blood-brothers Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine did (and won). But I come back to visibility… Christie will probably do best among the demographic of older SAG members, but I’m not sure that’s sizable enough to make the difference. Cotillard is young, beautiful, talented, and oh so good in a bio-pic of a famous person, all of which sounds like the stuff wins are made of… but she also performs in a movie that is not half as good as she is and that features subtitles, something to which many are totally averse. Besides, nobody except Robert Benigni (Life Is Beautiful) has ever won a SAG Award for a performance in a foreign language. The general feeling is that Blanchett and Jolie were nominated by default, not as a result of any large measure of passion, so it is incredibly hard to fathom either of them showing up.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Nominees
(1) Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
(2) Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)
(3) Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)
(4) Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James)
(5) Tommy Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men)
RATIONALE This one is tougher than it looks. The same people who liked Into the Wild enough to nominate it for a leading four awards, and particularly the old birds among that group, are going to feel very tempted to go with Holbrook to effectively encourage the Academy to do the same… and he is a sympathetic character (83 years old, never before nominated, unlikely to be again) who gave a fine performance (certainly more of a ‘supporting’ performance than Bardem’s, which is really a lead performance and is in the wrong category). Bardem and Jones could conceivably split the vote, but at the end of the day I think the younger members of the guild, who are perhaps less familiar with Holbrook’s resume than Bardem’s, will be unable to resist hopping onto the Bardem Express, which seems to be picking up more and more steam every day. Voters clearly liked Michael Clayton enough to give it three noms, so Wilkinson cannot be regarded as a very long shot. The same cannot be said for The Assassination of Jesse James, for which Affleck is the lone nominee—but the very fact that they remembered to nominate him means there is a base of support out there somewhere. Jones can only play the spoiler.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Nominees
(1) Ruby Dee (American Gangster)
(2) Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)
(3) Cate Blanchett (I’m Not There)
(4) Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)
(5) Catherine Keener (Into the Wild)
RATIONALE No, I haven’t lost my mind—I just think the stars might align for Dee tonight, if not on Oscar night, as well. The guild appreciated her and her late husband Ossie Davis enough six years ago to honor them with the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, and appreciated her enough this year to make her the only acting nominee from her film—and for a performance that totals less than ten minutes of screen time! Granted, her work in this film is not in the same hemisphere as Ryan’s or Blanchett’s, but I suspect Dee is the one feel-good, guilty pleasure many members will allow themselves—she is not only a screen legend but also a pioneer who helped pave the way for all of the minority members of SAG, and I think they may be the difference in a close race. Of course, Ryan has going for her the narrative of being picked out of nowhere for a major role and knocking it out of the park, something that many voters in similar shoes may want to reward and encourage. Blanchett was the highlight of her film, but for many it was a painful film to endure before (and after) her time on screen, and so one wonders if people didn’t lose patience and give up on it. Besides, many feel Blanchett’s role is a great ‘imitation,’ as opposed to a ‘performance,’ and that may hurt. Swinton and Keener are definite sleepers with realistic but outside shots—they are two of the most respected and admired working actors in the business and were highlights of their respective films.

BEST STUNTS
Nominees
(1) The Bourne Ultimatum
(2) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
(3) 300
(4) I Am Legend
(5) The Kingdom
RATIONALE Who knows? You figure the most commercially successful, cool, run-jump-kick ass movie of the year will take this category, which leads me to go with Bourne. Perhaps this is because I regard Pirates, 300, and Legend as more feats of CGI than stuntwork, and because The Kingdom came and went too quietly to catch most people’s attention. We’ll see.