Dec. 16—Shedding little light on an awards season that's thus far offered few clear front-runners, The Hollywood Foreign Press served up a Golden Globes nomination slate on Thursday morning that carefully spread the wealth and was rife with surprises. The black-and-white silent comedy The Artist scored six nominations, and the drama The Descendants earned five, setting up what could eventually be an Oscar night showdown between these two very different films.
But with separate categories for Drama and Comedy, they won't be competing head-to-head for Best Picture at the Globes. In the Drama category, The Descendants will square off against The Help, The Ides of March, Moneyball, Hugo and War Horse. For comedy, The Artist will face stiff competition from a surprisingly strong slate in a category that's usually padded with fluff: 50/50, Bridesmaids, Midnight in Paris and My Week with Marilyn.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood Foreign Press mostly turned up its nose at many of the December releases that often emerge as late-breaking heavy hitters in the annual film awards sweepstakes. David Fincher's hotly anticipated adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had to settle for nominations for its score and for lead actress, Rooney Mara.
Steven Spielberg's War Horse (opening Christmas Day) squeezed into the Best Picture, Drama category, which was expanded to six nominees — presumably because the HFPA felt like they owed the great director something. But its only other nomination was for the bombastic score by John Williams, perhaps the weakest element of the movie, suggesting support doesn't run too deep here. (Spielberg also was nominated in the Best Animated Film category for The Adventures of Tintin, which opens on Wednesday).
Perhaps most notably, Stephen Daldry's post-9/11 drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, co-starring Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks — the kind of movie that seems made solely to secure year-end award nominations — was entirely blanked. (It opens in New York to qualify for awards next week, but won't arrive locally until Jan. 20.)
Instead, the HFPA looked back to earlier in the year, to a number of movies that might not have seemed award-worthy at first glance, but which we're still talking about months later. The Help scored an impressive five nominations, including Best Picture, Drama and Best Actress, Drama for Viola Davis. The movie, dismissed in some corners for sentimentalizing the struggles of the Civil Rights era, now appears poised to rack up any number of awards, especially for Davis, whose only real competition comes from Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
On the drama side, Moneyball scored four nominations, including one for likely Best Actor, Drama winner Brad Pitt; and on the comedy side, Midnight in Paris picked up four nods, including an unexpected (but well-judged, in my book) Best Actor, Comedy citation for Owen Wilson. Far and away the biggest surprise of the day was the enthusiasm bestowed on the George Clooney-directed political thriller The Ides of March, which landed in the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay categories. Ryan Gosling was also nominated for Best Actor when many assumed Drive would give his best shot at a prize. (Cementing his reputation as a kind of Baby Clooney, Gosling also picked up a Best Actor, Comedy nod for Crazy Stupid Love.)
The Ides of March opened to strong reviews in October, but quickly faded from the awards conversation after it failed to catch on at the box office. You can say that the HFPA is simply obsessed with George Clooney and wants him to be the star of their ceremony. (He was also nominated for Best Actor, Drama for The Descendants.) That probably true to a degree, but credit here to Globes voters for singling out a vastly underappreciated, and indeed beautifully directed drama that never found the audience it deserved. (Perhaps less creditable was the Best Foreign Language Film nomination for a movie directed by, um, Angelina Jolie, In the Land of Blood and Honey. Sometimes a Globes voter has gotta do what a Globes voter has gotta do to make sure the A-listers turn up.)
Since the lead acting categories expand to ten nominees, five each for drama and comedy, there are inevitably fewer snubs than there are come Oscar nomination morning. At the Golden Globes announcement in Los Angeles on Thursday morning, Woody Harrelson scored big laughs for making reference to the fact that his dark drama Rampart was nowhere to be found on the list — though it seemed unlikely that such a dark, uneven film would go the distance. Far more notable were the omissions in the supporting categories, which combine drama and comedy, and where the likes of Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids), Carey Mulligan (Shame) and Ben Kingsley (Hugo) were left out of the mix.
Figuring out who's actually going to win these prizes is a fool's game, especially since the Globes tend to give a little something to everyone come awards night. (This year's ceremony will take place on Sunday Jan. 15.) Forced to guess, I'd predict The Descendants and The Artist win the Best Picture prizes, while Best Director goes to Martin Scorsese, whose children's film Hugo picked up three nods, and seems to have emerged as an appealing compromise choice in a lot of the critics awards that have been announced in recent days.
As for what light these nominations shed on the upcoming Oscar race, well, don't count your golden statuettes before they hatch. The HFPA tends to ignore well-regard indie actors, who then find unexpected embrace with the Academy. Which is to say, if you're Michael Shannon from Take Shelter or Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy Marlene May, you shouldn't give up hope yet. And if a movie like War Horse, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or even Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close proves an unexpected sensation with mainstream viewers, all bets are pretty much off.
To see a full list of the nominations, click here.
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