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GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS: REACTIONS

Atonement leads this year's Golden Globe nominations

FEATURES

By Tom Houseman

Opening up the list of the Golden Globe nominees for the first time everywhere is always exciting, because it means that Oscar season is really happening. Of course, sometimes the experience is like stepping into a Jacuzzi, with everything nice and comforting and as you would expect it, and sometimes it’s like getting blindsided by a two by four. This year makes for a bit of both, with some very standard nominees, led by Atonement’s seven nominations. Then there are a few nominees that come out of nowhere, which is where the real fun comes in.

It’s important to remember that the Golden Globes rarely eliminate potential nominees from the running. It is far more likely to set a standardized list of all the potential nominees that the guilds and critics will then chip away from until a solid shortlist is finalized. So what nominees came charging out of nowhere like an angry rhinoceros at a macramé convention (you have to admit, that would be very surprising)?

Picture-Drama

We all know that the Hollywood Foreign Press is severely lacking in backbone, but this is embarrassing even for them. Seven nominees for Best Picture-Drama? This is an organization that is completely unwilling to take a stand, which is part of what makes them so much less interesting than the Oscars. But even among their list of Best Picture nominees that included most of the films released in 2007, there were a few surprises.

There are three movies that have varied amounts of buzz over the year, but their exclusion from the NBR list and every critics circle awards made them seem like lost causes. Not so fast. The three surprises on this list are American Gangster, which had been considered by many to be a frontrunner for a Best Picture nomination; Eastern Promises, which received superb reviews but very little buzz, and The Great Debaters, which has very little buzz prior to its release.

When nominees you don’t expect end up getting nominated, a few that you would expect get left off. Of course, with a nomination list upwards of forty, it’s easier to include everything, but there were still a few films that got the cold shoulder. The big one is Into the Wild, which has had a rocky road in its quest to get a Best Picture nomination. Reviews were stellar, but box-office was weak and now both the critics and the Globes have ignored. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead was undoubtedly hoping to get a shot in the arm from the Globes, but Eastern Promises stole its spot as the small, gritty film on the list.

Actor-Drama

Eastern Promises love continues with a nomination for Viggo Mortensen. Mortensen, like the movie itself, had received great reviews but then fallen out of the collective consciousness of the Oscar world, but he just leapt back in.

The stars of the smaller films were hoping to get a lot of attention by getting nominated for a Globe, but they came up empty. Emile Hirsch could have been catapulted onto a lot of shortlists with a nomination, and John Cusack would have gotten a huge boost had he been nominated for his role in Grace is Gone, but both cae up empty.

Actress-Drama

Like pretty much every Best Actress race ever, there were just enough attention-grabbing performances to fill up the ballot, and the women you would expect to get nominated, did get nominated.

Picture-Musical/Comedy

It’s easy to forget just how much the HFPA loves their musicals, but when a movie like Across the Universe gets a Best Picture nomination, it serves as a big reminder. Everyone not obsessed with Julie Taymor (meaning everyone but me) had forgotten about this movie, but apparently the HFPA did not forget.

The musical some people might have been expecting them to nominate instead of Across the Universe was Once, which missed out on a nomination. Also, some of the more memorable comedies of the year got overlooked in favor of the musical. Lars and the Real Girl was hoping for some love, as was Talk to Me, but both ended up on the sideline.

Actor-Musical/Comedy

A simple flip between one nominee that we expected in exchange for one that we didn’t. Everyone was expecting Don Cheadle to get nominated for the biopic Talk to Me, and not many were expecting John C. Reilly to get nominated for the fake biopic Walk Hard. A few people thought the HFPA extreme love for Johnny Depp would be enough to get him nominations for Sweeney Todd and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, but he’ll have to be satisfied with just the one nomination.

Actress-Musical/Comedy

Surprisingly, there were more qualified potential nominees than there were spots for all of them, and instead of just nominating every woman in Los Angeles, the Globes kept out a few people. The most noticeable exclusions were Laura Linney for The Savages and Nicole Kidman for Margot at the Wedding. These were both darker, more cynical performances than the one’s nominated, which could explain it.

Supporting Actress

The Globes just cannot resist star power, so it’s not too surprising that they nominated Julia Roberts for Charlie Wilson’s War. Of course, her inclusion kept a few other contenders off the list. A double supporting actress nomination for Atonement is looking iffy, as both Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave got ignored. The complete lack of love for Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead continued here, as Marisa Tomei failed to receive a nomination.

Supporting Actor

The biggest surprise here is that I made it through the list without falling asleep. Hal Holbrook, Philip Bosco, and Armin Muehller-Stahl might have been hoping for nominations but they could not overcome the power of John Travolta in a dress and a fat suit.

Best Director

Many people expected Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to be too weird—and foreign—for the Globes to embrace it. Just goes to show you that anyone can surprise you, even the HFPA. Ridley Scott’s nomination was also a big surprise, as clearly the HFPA saw something in American Gangster that the critics circles and the NBR did not.

Several respected directors were really hoping for nominations here, but with a list that, shockingly, only included five nominees, several were left off. Paul Thomas Anderson and Mike Nichols could have capitalized on their film’s Best Picture nominations, but that will be hard without Best Director nominations. Sean Penn, Sidney Lumet, and David Cronenberg were undoubtedly hoping to get nominated based on how well-respected they are, but it didn’t seem to be in the cards for them this year.

Best Screenplay

Inclusion: Who’d have thought that there would be so much love for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? Nobody could have expected that this film would get nominations in both Best Director and Best Screenplay, especially at the expense of films like There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and Michael Clayton. The Best Screenplay category is a tricky one because it melds both Original and Adapted Screenplays into one category, so there are always some contenders left off the list.

Best Song

To be fair, we really know nothing about this category before the Globe nominees are announced, because so few precursors cover it. But still, not many people would have expected Grace is Gone to be nominated, or Love in the Time of Cholera to be nominated for “Despedida.” The title track of Walk Hard was a little bit easier to see, because funny songs always have an edge in this wide open category, especially at the Globes, but was still quite a surprise.

But the biggest surprise in this category, and possibly the whole list of nominations? No nominations for Once. People were expecting a nomination for either “Falling Slowly” or “If you Want Me”, but shockingly, the film came up empty. Other songs that might have been expected to pop up here were “Come So Far (Got So Far to Go)” from Hairspray and “Do You Feel Me” from American Gangster.

Best Score

This category is a bit too much for me to stomach in an unbiased manner right now, so I’ll put it like this: the Globes went for generic instead of innovative, and classic instead of ground-breaking. Expecting nominees like Lust, Caution, There Will Be Blood, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford got left off the list in exchange for Howard Shore’s Eastern Promises score, and Clint Eastwood’s work on Grace is Gone.

Animated Feature

With Persepolis apparently unable to be both foreign and animated (I didn’t realize the two were mutually exclusive) the question was whether Beowulf or Bee Movie would get the nomination. If you guessed Bee Movie, you guessed right.

Foreign Language Film

The biggest surprise here is that I correctly predicted all the nominations in a foreign language category. Don’t expect it happen again for a long time.

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