The Golden Globes are chosen by a group of around 90 journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, rather than members of the film industry.
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The nominees for the 2016 Golden Globes were announced this morning, and as usual it’s a mixture of artistic appreciation and blatant pandering, as the HFPA bends over backwards to invite as many shiny people to their party as they can. It will compete against The Big Short, Trainwreck, Joy, and Spy.
The Golden Globes will be handed out January 10th on NBC, with Ricky Gervais serving as host. Either way, Johnny Depp got nothing for his commanding performance as Irish mob guy Whitey Bulger.
The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, snagged nominations for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score and Leo got Best Actor. Her Best Actress competition includes Brie Larson for “Room”, Saoirse Ronan for “Brooklyn”, as well as the duo from “Carol”.
And Spotlight was perhaps too much of an ensemble piece for the Globes.
Meanwhile, traditional TV broadcasters like ABC, FOX and PBS earned 4 nominations each, but CBS only clocked in with one. Whether or not that campaign strategy will backfire for the Oscars remains to be seen.
SNUB: Tom Hanks, “Bridge of Spies” After losing out on a SAG and Globe nomination, Hanks will probably be sidelined at the Oscars as well. Also nominated were Michael Fassbender (“Steve Jobs”), Eddie Redmayne (“The Danish Girl”), DiCaprio and Bryan Cranston (“Trumbo”). There’s only one supporting actor and actress award for the entirety of television, which the Globes otherwise split into three categories: drama, comedy, and limited series or movie.
Earlier this year, Inside Amy Schumer won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series and Schumer was nominated for three additional honors in the writing, directing, and acting categories. However, voters gave his spot to Al Pacino in the Bleecker Street comedy “Danny Collins”. Rather, the old guard benefited from the resurgence of the miniseries form, which neither the broadcast networks nor the streaming services have caught up with.
Still, it wouldn’t be the Golden Globes nominations if there weren’t a handful of head-scratchers, puzzlers and outright howlers.
Other notable absentees on the nomination rolls were HBO’s fading “Girls” as well as “True Detective” (which, after landing four nominations in its premiere season, was critically lambasted for its second cycle).
Some of this is not the Globes’ fault – it’s just a deep year for dramas.
The nominees for best TV drama are Empire, Game of Thrones, Mr. Robot, Narcos, and Outlander. Ditto its leading lady (and last year’s Globe winner) Ruth Wilson. “If anything, this arbitrary delineation of genres just proves how pointless that delineation is in the first place”. The nods were seen as a blatant signal that the HFPA cares more about hobnobbing with internationally friendly celebs than actually awarding projects based on their, you know, artistic merit. While the nomination reveals the HFPA’s soft spot for aging icons, it also says a lot about the best-actor field this season, which is not almost as strong as in previous years. Because the shows are of the same genre, they were both nominated for Best TV series, Comedy. It was nominated for best picture, comedy, actor (Matt Damon) and director (Ridley Scott).
Not everything went well during the Globes’ Thursday announcement.
SURPRISE: The inclusion of streaming series “Casual” and “Mozart In the Jungle” Streaming is the new cable.
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-Actress, Musical or Comedy: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Veep”; Gina Rodriguez, “Jane the Virgin”; Lily Tomlin, “Grace and Frankie”; Jamie Lee Curtis, “Scream Queens”; Rachel Bloom, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”.
