Time to engage in our cherished annual shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic awards tea leaves reading. First, shall we dispense with the Golden Globes? Allow us to make a safe prediction: The awards show that was once Hollywood’s Biggest Party will continue to shrivel. Only the caterer should weep about this, but the entertainment industry does cling to outmoded ritual. “Nobody likes this event,” says A Media Exec Negotiating His Buyout. “Nobody. And yet it keeps happening! It’s like the creature that wouldn’t die.” Hollywood defies logic! There’s a lovable zombie quality to awards season. The crowds get smaller, yet the show must go on.

As we’ve said, too many times, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, formerly in charge of the Globes, was made up of shills who passed themselves off as journalists. After one too many controversies, that wicked crew was dissolved. The new shebang is owned by Eldridge Industries, a private equity firm, and Dick Clark Productions, the warhorse of awards show producers. The 300 people who voted on this year’s Globes are former HFPA members plus new recruits meant to make the body more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. The requirement that they be (loosely-defined) members of the foreign press remains. Uzbek bloggers and cut-and-paste artists from Nauru are welcome to apply, provided they cover Hollywood.

Unlike members of Hollywood’s guilds and academies, these voters are salaried employees of a nonprofit organization. For about $75,000 a year and a health plan, they get to vote on movies and TV shows and crank out content for the Globes website. All show business is flim-flam and this is not the Council on Foreign Relations. If you watch the Golden Globes, please know you are at least as qualified as those picking the winners.

Whoever runs the Globes, the hinkiness remains: It’s a club for lampreys clinging to the underbelly of Hollywood. Now that the HFPA has been euthanized, poof goes the last pretense of independence. That’s how the industry wants it. It doesn’t mean Golden Globe winners aren’t deserving. Still, before you bite into that hot dog, it’s good to know how the sausage gets made. The fear of Globes execs that the ceremony will be disrupted by protests over the Israel-Hamas War ought to be coupled with existential dread. The more insular these affairs become, the further Hollywood drifts from the mass audience. It’s past time to find it again. — Marcello Rubini

Motion Picture — Drama

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Maestro

• Oppenheimer

• Past Lives

• The Zone of Interest

• Anatomy of a Fall

In a category full of soon-to-be Best Picture nominees, the winner is Christopher Nolan’s A-bomb opus. “Killers of the Flower Moon could upset it, but I highly doubt it,” says our friend The Gimlet-Eyed Publicist. “This is the movie that speaks to Hollywood’s grandest visions of itself.”

Motion Picture — Musical of Comedy

• Poor Things

• Barbie

• American Fiction

• The Holdovers

• May December

• Air

Make way for the hot pink juggernaut. “This category was basically invented for movies like this,” says The Harried Marketing Whiz. Greta Gerwig’s dumb-smart doll picture won’t be dislodged, though there are four nominees in this bucket we’d like to see win instead. Get ready for that speech about how a doll can be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and/or Grand Vizier of the Galaxy.

Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama

• Annette Bening (Nyad)

• Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)

• Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)

• Greta Lee (Past Lives)

• Carey Mulligan (Maestro)

• Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla)

Killers of the Flower Moon will be in the hunt for truckload of awards this season. That’s not always a good thing. The breakout here is Gladstone, whom voters will reward as the first indigenous actress hit these heights. Hüller would be a shocker, but this was the year she arrived in Hollywood.

Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama

• Bradley Cooper (Maestro)

• Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon)

• Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)

• Colman Domingo (Rustin)

• Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers)

• Barry Keoghan (Saltburn)