Two days ago (on 1.15 at 5:54 pm) L.A. Times/”24 Frames” columnist Steven Zeitchek posted the clearest explanation I’ve read about the apparent Up In The Air acrimony between Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner. Reitman seemed to radiate a certain coolness toward Turner when they took the stage tonight to accept the Golden Globe award for screenwriting.
Unable as I’ve always been to separate my feelings from my pulse-readings, I wasn’t very accurate with my Golden Globe predictions. Correct calls: Avatar for Best Picture, Sandra Bullock for Best Actress in a Drama, Jeff Bridges for Best Actor in a Drama, Meryl Streep for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical, Mo’Nique for Best Supporting Actress, and Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor.
I got everything else wrong. But everyone got Best Director wrong. It had been signed, sealed and all but delivered for Kathryn Bigelow — I mean, everyone with a shred of focus and perspective had decided this would happen — and then the HFPA, whores at the core, gave it to James Cameron because of the eye-popping grandiosity of Avatar‘s vision and box-office.
My guess is that Robert Downey, Jr. has just won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy/Music award because he’s sharp and funny and well-liked for his amusing way of riffing on the truth. Because the idea that he gave the best performance in this realm is a joke. He got through Sherlock Holmes with a slightly wiggy deadpan attitude…fine. But hardly the stuff of tribute. Any rational body would have given the award to Michael Stuhlbarg or Matt Damon. “Art in the blood is likely to take the strangest forms,” Downey said. “The Hollywood Foreign Press is a strange bunch.”
No one with an understanding of anything would suggest that The Hangover is a better, more valuable film than (500) Days of Summer. Nobody would even dare to compare the two in conversation. And yet the HFPA has just given The Hangover its Best Comedy or Musical award. “Wow…we didn’t expect this,” said director Todd Phillips.
Avatar‘s James Cameron has just won the Golden Globe for Best Director. A shocker. The question would be “why?” when the award seemed to be Kathryn Bigelow‘s. The answer would be that the HFPA members are hugely impressed by Avatar‘s worldwide reach and sweep. “I’m not prepared ’cause I kinda thought Kathryn was gonna get this,” Cameron said, “and she deserves it.”
Martin Scorsese‘s life achievement award speech is by far the most elegant and movingly phrased. Clean, clear and very much the words of a man who is alive and hungry for bear. I love that William Faulkner quote: “The past is never dead. It is not even past.”
HE to Chloe Sevigny: If you don’t want an escort to accidentally get his foot caught on the hem of your dress and (reportedly) rip it, don’t wear a dress with a train that drags on the floor, sticking out a couple of feet. Make sense?
I had conflicted feelings about Ross Katz‘s Taking Chance , to say the least, but Kevin Bacon‘s lead performance as a sad Marine was perhaps his finest ever. I still say Taking Chance is a sneaky Iraq War sell-job in sheep’s clothing, but Bacon has just won a Golden Globe for his performance. No argument whatsoever.
Because Ryan Bingham‘s “The Weary Kind” (from Crazy Heart) won the Golden Globe for Best Song, I guess it’s all the more certain that Jeff Bridges will win for Best Actor. (Not that there was much doubt about this.) I suspect that if anyone in the HFPA had even half-liked Everybody’s Fine, Paul McCartney‘s song would have won.
“One thing that can’t be bought is a Golden Globe. Officially.” — host Ricky Gervais, speaking about three minutes ago.
The unstoppable Mo’Nique has just won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. Had to happen and it did. But in her damply emotional thank-you speech, and after thanking her husband and Lee Daniels and so on, did I not hear Mo’Nique say, “I celebrate this award with all the Preciouses, with all the Marys”?
In his thank-you speech after winning Best Actor for The Silence of the Lambs, what would the reaction have been if Anthony Hopkins had said, “I celebrate this Oscar with all the serials and cannibals out there…may they learn to heal their ways”?
I don’t actually believe that A Serious Man‘s Michael Stuhlbarg will win the Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical Performance, as stated two days ago. I recognize there are problems in playing a whiner. It’s just that the idea of The Informant‘s Matt Damon, Nine‘s Daniel Day-Lewis or Sherlock Holmes‘ Robert Downey Jr. winning seems ludicrous. And that there doesn’t seem any chance for (500) Days of Summer‘s Joseph Gordon-Levitt to win (although I’d be cool with that).