Ghost of Nikki Finke says Sorta Toldja!
Surrender the Pink!
Dear Wags,
Well! We’ve been gimlet-eyed about the Golden Globes since January 20, 1944 (the date of the first G.G. ceremony). That said, the Awards Squad is not above awarding points for improvement. Last year, the old Hollywood Foreign Press Association was rubbished and its assets were hoovered up by the money mavens at Eldridge and Dick Clark Productions (owned by trade pub gigantor Penkse Media). Give the proprietors a gold star for mercy killing. Those deep in the weeds know the voters of the new Golden Globes Foundation made slight departures in last night’s awards picks, which were a step back from the abject star-fuckery of their predecessors. To wit, Barbie did not zip away with a truckload of awards. And, Barbie is exactly the kind of flick the late HFPA would have fallen over itself to suck up to. This isn’t enough to save the Globes (or awards shows in general) but it’s an improvement! At this point, it feels like punching way down to pick apart a telecast only somebody strapped to a gurney would endure. Instead, revel in our takes on the winners and what it all means. —Marcello Rubini and Sarah Brown
Oppenheimer is Unstoppenheimer. Insert caveat about how Globes voters aren’t like members of legit awards-giving bodies here. Still, this isn’t nuclear physics: Christopher Nolan’s epic is as close to an Oscar lock as you get. Oppenheimer won 5 Globes: Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Drama (Cillian Murphy), Best Original Score (Ludwig Göransson), and Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr). The old HFPA might have awarded the last bauble to Barbie’s Ryan Gosling, but that’s no upset.
Barbie Got What She Deserved. Who can fault Barbie for its win in the new category of Cinematic and Box Office Achievement? Greta Gerwig’s doll-baby minted nearly $2 billion. Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell earned their Best Original Song award for the moody What Was I Made For.
Anatomy of a Fall is Rising. Hollywood types have room for exactly one foreign picture in their noggins. Lodged in cortexes this year is Justine Triet’s Fall, which won Globes for Best Foreign Language Movie and Best Screenplay. Topping Barbie in the latter category counts as “a welcome surprise,” says our friend, the Depressed Screenwriter. “But Celine Song [Past Lives] was robbed.”
HBO Gets its Revenge. TV’s hallowed drama factory was consumed by the godawful Warner Bros.-Discovery merger, but (predictably) it got showered with awards for Succession, which won 4 Globes: Best Drama Series, Best Actress (Sarah Snook), Best Actor (Kieran Culkin, who got past Pedro Pascal from The Last of Us, now fading from memory) and Best Supporting Actor (Matthew Macfadyen).
The Bear is the New Succession. Several years hence, we are going to gaze at the mountain of awards The Bear keeps winning and say, them again? FX’s kitchen sink dramedy won 3 awards — not just for the show, but for Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, who were 2023’s Stars of Tomorrow.
Ricky Gervais Returns. One of the most tiresome clichés about the old Globes was that they were wicked. Gervais, the only telecast host who lived up to the rep, eviscerated Hollywood hypocrisy. Everyone since seems desperate and pandering (ah, the default position). Fittingly, the scrappy cat-lover won for Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television (edging Chris Rock).
Beef Brought Home the Bacon for Netflix. Beef swept the cumbersome Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television (gesundheit!) category — winning 3 trophies. In the worse-old-days, Ali Wong and Steven Yeun might have been passed over for fluffier performances.
The Holdovers is the Year’s Little Movie That Could. Most awards seasons, there’s an unlikely picture that catches fire. Alexander Payne’s lovely The Holdovers is firmly in that lane, with both Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph winning Globes. An unfortunate casualty of the momentum may be Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction.
Poor Things was the Barbie-Slayer. The Globes has loopy categories designed to reward as many stars as possible. But this year, it worked against the year’s biggest movie and rewarded Yorgos Lanthimos’ out-there Frankenstein flick. The picture won the comedy and musical category. More reliably, Emma Stone took home a prize. She’ll be an Oscar nominee.
Lily Gladstone Has the Big Mo. Lavishly praised as Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is, it’s unlucky to have Oppenheimer as a seasonal rival. It will rake in critics’ prizes and other trinkets, but the most surefire bet for an Oscar is Gladstone. The Best Actress field is formidable, but she’s got the most compelling narrative. And This is Still Hollywood.
The Boy and the Heron vs. Spidey. Do sane people pay attention to a Best Animated Movie race? Anyhow, we expected Hayao Miyazaki’s evocative fantasy to beat box office juggernaut Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse in this category. Even Globes voters have artsy pretensions. Big picture: Superhero and Multiverse are words you’re going to hear far less of in 2024.
All Media Outlets Should be Banned From Using the Headline Snubs and Surprises. Please. The Ghost of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki in The Crown) topping Meryl Streep’s guest turn in Only Murders in the Building is not shocking. The much-nominated Streep loses awards contests all the time.
Not Even Taylor Swift Can Save the Golden Globes. Swifties, among others, did not watch the Golden Globes. So, they did not hear that lame joke about Travis Kelce. They simply scrolled through snaps of her in a viridescent Gucci dress and moved on. Long ago, the awards show became an expensive excuse for another Instagram moment. Swift dutifully showed up when her Eras Tour got nominated in the box office smash category (it lost to Barbie). Appreciated though it was, her presence merely underscores the need for more stars like her.
