Slightly more than 4,000 of the Screen Actors Guild's 100,000-plus members are about to become the key players for next year's SAG Awards.

On Friday, a random drawing will be held to pick the 4,200 members who will serve as the nominating committee for the 19th SAG Awards on Jan. 27, 2013. Half of those will nominate film performances, and remaining half will nominate primetime television performances.

The entire Screen Actors Guild numbers around 120,000, and all members whose dues are current (a number that generally reduces the pool to between 90,000 and 100,000) are eligible to vote for the winners at the SAG Awards. But to make the nominating process more manageable,...

Awards season has come to an end, the silent movie won it all – and for the first time in the three years I've been doing this for TheWrap, the movie that I predicted would win Best Picture in late August or early September did not win.

Of course, I hadn't seen "The Descendants" at the time I called it for the win, which might be an excuse – except that I had seen "The Artist," which I thought was thoroughly charming, but too light to actually be named Best Picture. 

Wrong. With backing from the Weinstein Co. campaign machine, "The Artist" moved from improbable to inevitable in short order.

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"The Artist" was named the year's best independent feature at the Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday afternoon, continuing a dominant awards-season performance for the silent film that is expected to be the big winner at Sunday's Oscars as well.

The film also won awards for director Michel Hazanavicius, lead actor Jean Dujardin and cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman, taking home prizes in four of the five categories in which it was nominated.

Where the Indie Spirit Award voters often stay away from Oscar favorites, their choices this year went to a number of likely Academy Awards winners, including "The Artist," Dujardin and supporting actor Christopher Plummer from "Beginners." 

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Despite two days of hysteria whipped up in the media by Sacha Baron Cohen, the comic actor's plans for the Oscar red carpet on Sunday remain anyone's guess. And that is still causing concern within the Academy.

As the title character from his upcoming movie "The Dictator," Baron Cohen began Friday threatening the Academy that he said had "banned" him and ended it declaring "VICTORY!" and posting a photo of himself with a gun and a pair of Oscar tickets.

But the extent of that victory is hardly complete. According to conversations with AMPAS officials who did not wish to be identified, many within the Academy still feel very strongly that the Oscar...