Golden Globe Reactions
Everything I think about the ceremony last night is best summed up in my @ScreenSavour Twitter feed from the broadcast: lots of pith and sarcasm. If you think awards shows are trivial, then the Golden Globes are Trivial-with-a-capital-T. Yet it’s too much fun for me to resist pulling out a needle and popping an over-produced balloon, so I had my fun.
Of course, the most interesting parts of the ceremony — Up winning Best Original Score, Jeff Bridges winning Best Actor — are eclipsed in the Monday morning discussion by James Cameron, who won Best Director for Avatar, which also won for
I’ll be the first to say I don’t know what Avatar’s fortunes last night mean in regard to anything awards-related down the road. All night, awards-watchers I respect were calling out that someone’s nice acceptance speech at the Globes all but cemented an Oscar in a few weeks, but then, when something they didn’t like won, they cautioned everyone to relax because it’s “just the Golden Globes.” This seems like double-dealing spin at best. The Golden Globes are either worth something (no matter how small) or they aren’t. If Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique win in the supporting actor categories at the Oscars, it’s not because of their genuine and sincere Golden Globe speeches; it’s because they’ve been cleaning up at almost every award show since December.
In any event: I'll be interested to see just how many people tuned in to the Golden Globes and whether there will be an Avatar effect from the audience. The producers spent the whole broadcast essentially pumping the audience for its victory at the end of the show, and no doubt a lot of people were rooting for the film to win. The Oscars will be mindful of that, I believe, if for no other reason than they're quite sensitive over The Dark Knight fiasco last year. (Incidentally, as far as quality blockbusters go, The Dark Knight runs circles around Avatar.)
I’ll have more awards season chatter when the Oscar nominations are announced. Now back to some legitimate criticism.
2 comments:
I actually forgot they were on, though I don't think I've watched them for a few years. Actually I might "boycott" the Oscars this year if what I hear is true - that they have disposed of the Honorary Awards, i.e. the only trophy that consistently goes to someone who deserves it. An institution that farts on its own history like that is worthless in my book, but if I don't watch it will be the first time I haven't in 20 years, a.k.a. since I was in kindergarten. So it'll be a melancholy protest as well as a futile one.
Yikes, I hadn't heard anything about doing with away with the Honorary Awards. That would be a tremendously bad mistake—which, upon saying that in the context of the Academy Awards, makes it likely to be true, I guess.
I may end up not watching this year either, due to a vacation scheduled during that weekend. I suppose it will depend on my potential access to U.S. network television. I'll still do the should-win and prediction lists as a way to make my preferences known and expose what has become painfully predictable in the Internet age. Watching on television isn't even necessary anymore unless you want to make fun of it as it happens. Jim Emerson wrote that he hadn't turned on television once last night but was sufficiently entertained by Twitter. (But hey, someone's gotta tweet those jokes.)
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