Golden Globes Nominees

[Cosima___J]

http://www.hollywood.com/news/Full_List ... es/7742020

What say you?
Are any of your favorites listed?
Who will win?

[jbuck919]

I certainly plan to see The King's Speech. Don't know about any others. I was not aware until I read the following that this award is as problematic in its own way as the Oscars:

# The New York Times Reprints

December 14, 2010
Golden Globes Show Love and Snubs
By BROOKS BARNES and MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — Golden Globe voters predictably circled around “The King’s Speech” on Tuesday, nominating that highly praised period drama about a stuttering King George VI for seven trophies, including for best drama.

But what got Hollywood buzzing was the complete shutout of a perceived Oscar front-runner — Paramount’s “True Grit,” directed by Ethan and Joel Coen — and the boost voters gave to “The Fighter,” a gritty boxing drama that took more than four years to make and that received six nominations.

“I’m extremely superstitious, so hopefully this is good news for the film,” said Todd Lieberman, a co-owner of Mandeville Films, a production company that eventually joined with Relativity Media to make “The Fighter” after Paramount balked at the cost but eventually agreed to distribute it.

“The Social Network,” David Fincher’s tale of ambition in the Internet age, also received six nominations. Other front-runners include “Black Swan,” Darren Aronofsky’s melodrama about a deranged ballerina, and Christopher Nolan’s dream-invader blockbuster “Inception,” which had strong support from voters, with four nominations each. In an example of how the Globes likes to spread the love around, Lisa Cholodenko’s “Kids Are All Right,” about a strained lesbian relationship, also received four nominations, including one for best comedy or musical.

The Globes, given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of about 90 writers and freelancers, are not taken seriously as artistic milestones, though they have proved a decent prognosticator of the eventual winner for the best-picture Oscar. The organization is still trying to live down naming Pia Zadora new star of the year in 1981, something that many awards strategists brought up on Tuesday as they tried to make sense of a puzzling nominations list. Studios have long felt that the group tends to nominate based on star wattage instead of performance in an effort to orchestrate a red-carpet spectacle.

In that department this year: Angelina Jolie, who received an out-of-the-blue nomination for her role as a mysterious Englishwoman in “The Tourist.” That caper got three nominations, including one for best comedy or musical, despite receiving abysmal reviews and a cold shoulder at the box office.

Similarly, the campy “Burlesque,” starring Christina Aguilera and Cher, was nominated for best comedy or musical, a category that also included “Alice in Wonderland” — neither a comedy nor a musical — and “RED,” an action picture starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich as retired secret agents.

Voters focused on young stars, perhaps in an effort to attract younger viewers to the awards telecast. Emma Stone was nominated for best actress in a comedy or musical for the high school romp “Easy A”; Anne Hathaway also got a nod in that category, for the romantic comedy “Love and Other Drugs.” (A full list of nominees can be found at nytimes.com/carpetbagger.)

Over all, the nominations gave little clarity to this year’s Oscar race but rather exposed the challenges facing studios as they campaign ahead of the Academy Awards, to be held on Feb. 27.

For years the Globes were seen as important Academy Awards tea leaves, with the best-picture Oscar mirroring the association’s choice for best drama or best comedy or musical about two-thirds of the time. But last year, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded its nomination field for best picture to 10 from 5, the foreshadowing ability of the Globes suffered.

Half of the best-picture candidates at last year’s Oscars were not among the 10 best-picture nominees at the Globes. The big winner at the Globes was “Avatar”; “The Hurt Locker” won the top prize at the Oscars. “Nine,” which was a Globes front-runner with five nominations, won nothing at either the Globes or the Oscars.

The press association’s approach to animation — voters are banned from nominating animated films in best-picture categories — has also rendered the Globes more party than prognosticator at a time when such pictures (like “Toy Story 3”) are serious Oscar contenders.

The upshot one year into the new Academy voting system: Globes voters can’t anoint a future Oscar winner and can’t stop a picture like “District 9,” which last year had a single Globes nomination (for its script) yet was nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards. In fact, nominations and shutouts alike only spur publicists and awards strategists to turn up the heat under various contenders.

Nominees, meanwhile, were their usual mix of groggy and gracious. Reached by telephone at 1:30 a.m. in Australia, Tom Hooper, nominated for directing “The King’s Speech,” said: “I think it’s very exciting and unexpected. I think I’ll probably just spend the night on the telephone.” Melissa Leo, nominated for her portrayal of the brassy and bossy mother in “The Fighter, said, “These are a particular group of people with a particular sort of taste, and I’m so pleased to have pleased them.”

As always, Hollywood will pay outsize attention to which films and contributions were brushed aside. Ben Affleck was snubbed in the directing, writing and acting categories for “The Town,” a bank-robbery drama that also failed to get a best-picture nomination; its lone nod was in the supporting actor race, for Jeremy Renner. (“It’s bananas,” Mr. Renner said of his nomination.)

The exiling of “True Grit” is less of a surprise when you consider the association’s history with westerns and the Coen brothers. Their “No Country for Old Men” didn’t win a Globe for best drama, though it swept many other awards and went on to win the Oscar for best picture in 2008. More puzzling to veteran awards strategists was the snubbing of Leonardo DiCaprio, a past favorite of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association who did not receive a nomination for his starring roles in either “Inception” or “Shutter Island.”

While the motion picture awards gobble up attention, the television categories in recent years have brought much of the star power that makes the Globes telecast an event to watch. This year, big names nominated for their TV work include Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”), Alec Baldwin (“30 Rock”), Steve Carell (“The Office”) and Al Pacino (“You Don’t Know Jack”).

Fox’s “Glee” was the leader among television series, with five nominations. HBO, almost always a powerhouse at the Globes, led among television networks, with 12 nominations, including nods for “Temple Grandin,” “The Pacific” and “You Don’t Know Jack.”

About 17 million people watched the telecast last year, a 14 percent increase from the previous year. The British comedian Ricky Gervais will again be the host of the show, scheduled for Jan. 16 on NBC.

The Globes have been fraught with more than the usual awards-season tension, as the ceremony’s backers remain squared off in a lawsuit. In mid-November the Hollywood Foreign Press Association sued Dick Clark Productions, which has produced the event since 1983.

In its suit the press association accused the company of trying to misappropriate rights to the Globes by “surreptitiously” entering a new eight-year broadcast agreement with NBC. Dick Clark Productions, which has been controlled since 2007 by Red Zone Capital Partners, has said the suit is baseless.

The fight does not affect this season’s show, but it calls into question the rights to future broadcasts and has exposed the financial underpinnings of a ceremony for which NBC currently pays a license fee of about $13 million, up from about $4.7 million in 2005.

This year’s awards season has also been clouded by a murder mystery. In November the publicist Ronni Chasen, a familiar figure on the awards circuit, was gunned down in her car after she attended a movie premiere, spurring an investigation that connected the crime to an ex-convict, Harold Martin Smith, who fatally shot himself as the police tried to question him.

Earlier, the season was dampened when Michael Douglas, who this year starred in both “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” and “Solitary Man,” was given a diagnosis of throat cancer. On Tuesday he was nominated for a supporting-actor trophy for the “Wall Street” sequel.

“Boy, was I ready for some good news,” Mr. Douglas said in a statement. Asked if Mr. Douglas, who has undergone aggressive cancer treatment, would attend the ceremony, his spokesman, Allen Burry, said, “I think he’d like to.”

Paula Schwartz contributed reporting from New York.