You know how this awards season is all about populism and less about three-hour sobathons starring Very Serious People?
Yeah, it’s not. We got that wrong. Sorry. Although WALL-E won Best Picture at a recent awards ceremony, the nominations for next year’s Golden Globes were announced yesterday, and they seem to indicate that it’ll be another good year for dreary films about troubled people who stare into the middle distance a lot.
Golden Globes front-runners include Doubt, Frost/Nixon and Revolutionary Road. So far so miserable. But Batman got a look-in too, with one nomination for, oh, the dead chap. Joy.
Hey, you there! Do you often find yourself getting annoyed because the Oscars don’t go on for as long as you want, what with the nominations, the luncheons, the six-hour red carpet specials and the actual ceremony itself, full of smug introductions and damp-eyed acceptance speeches and the obligatory 400-song performance by shitting Enya?
No, neither do we. Neither does anyone. But, anyway here are the Golden Globes nominations, which are significant because there’s a minuscule chance that they might influence the Oscars in some barely-noticeable way! Hooray!
And the Golden Globes are going to damn well make sure they don’t screw anything up this time – not like their last strike-crippled ceremony, which involved a man sitting at a table reading out names for half an hour. So forget the fact that WALL-E was recently named as the best film of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association – this year the Golden Globes are getting SERIOUS! Only the dreariest, most quietly depressing movies are being made this year. No fun allowed, you hear?
That’s why, as yesterday’s Golden Globes nominations revealed, The Dark Knight and WALL-E were effectively pushed out of contention in favour of lots of films that only drama teachers will pretend to like. The New York Times reports:
A gloomy Hollywood on Thursday put aside a dismal economy and the threat of an actors? strike, focusing instead on Golden Globe nominations that thrust ?The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? and ?Frost/Nixon? to the award season?s center stage with five each, with both nominated for best dramatic picture. ?Doubt? also received five nominations.
Although WALL-E was nominated for Best Animated Feature and The Dark Knight picked up a nod for Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger – a category that also bizarrely recognises Tom Cruise‘s weird little turn in Tropic Thunder – that’s about it. The big films to be named in the Golden Globes nominations were:
Revolutionary Road (Kate Winslet sobs because she’s trapped in a suburban hell)
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt sobs because he ages backwards and is a bit like Forrest Gump)
The Reader (Kate Winslet sobs because of the Holocaust and whatever)
Doubt (Philip Seymour Hoffman sobs because Meryl Streep caught him bumming a boy or something, and probably sobs about it too, we expect)
Frost/Nixon (Nobody sobs, but there are lots of heavy pauses and meaningful looks, which are almost as good)
Slumdog Millionaire (An uplifting film about… hey, did we just say ‘uplifting’? How did this get on the list? Someone’s head will roll for this, you hear? ROLL!)
The Golden Globes will be held on January 11. Please let this information affect you however you choose.