DOUBLE FEATURE
Oscars and Golden Globes sometimes see things differently
The first major awards show of the year was full of surprises.
Several films considered fan and critic favourites, including The Post, Get Out and Dunkirk, were not just shut out of the Golden Globes best picture awards, but all categories. Talk immediately turned to whether the best drama winner Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri is now an Oscar front-runner.
But the two award shows don’t always align. Part of the reason is the makeup of the respective shows. While the Globes have two best picture awards — one for drama and one for comedies or musicals — the Academy Awards don’t make that distinction. The awards shows also have different voting bodies: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has more than 5,000 members made up of entertainment-industry workers, determine Oscar winners; the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has about 90 members and is made up of journalists and photographers, determines the Golden Globes.
Here’s a look at to what extent the Globes have mirrored the Academy Awards in the past.
BEST PICTURE
Only five out of the last 10 best picture winners at the Oscars have won one of the top Golden Globes for best motion picture drama or best comedy-musical.
In 2011, The Social Network beat The King’s Speech for best drama at the Globes, but the reverse happened for the Oscars’ best picture. And in 2016, The Revenant beat out Spotlight for the Golden Globe for best drama. (Do the Globes have something against journalism movies?) Slumdog Millionaire, Argo and 12 Years a Slave are among the movies that won at both shows. Last year, Moonlight infamously defeated La La Land for a best picture Oscar — and both had won a best picture Globe, for drama and comedy-musical, respectively.
BEST ACTRESS
Here’s a category where the two awards shows more closely align.
Nine out of the past 10 years, one of the Golden Globe winners for best actress in a drama or comedymusical went on to win the Oscar for best actress.
Even when best actress results did not sync up in 2008, it was still Kate Winslet who won both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for lead actress — just for different movies. The Golden Globes awarded Winslet for her leading role in Revolutionary Road and gave her a supporting actress trophy for The Reader. The academy, however, considered her role in the latter to be leading material, and she won the best actress Oscar.
Best supporting actress is a slightly different story: Six years out of the last decade, the same actress has been awarded at both the Globes and the Oscars.
BEST ACTOR
Nine of the last 10 best actor Oscar winners were honoured with a Globe, too.
The only case where winners differed was in 2009: Sean Penn won the Oscar for Milk, while Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) and Colin Farrell (In Bruges) received Golden Globes. Gary Oldman and James Franco won this year’s Globes for Darkest Hour and The Disaster Artist for drama and comedy, respectively — and Oldman seems likely to be nominated and win the Oscar.
While supporting actor awards are also mostly similar — in the past decade, eight were given to the same person during both ceremonies — last year marked only the second time in Globes history that the category’s winner, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, nominated for his role in Nocturnal Animals, was not even nominated for the Academy Award. The first incident was in 1975, when Richard Benjamin won a Golden Globe for his role in The Sunshine Boys but was passed over for an Oscar nod.
BEST DIRECTOR
There have been just four occasions in the past 10 years when the academy and Golden Globes awarded the same director.
Note that over that time period, only one winning director in either show was a woman: Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Oscar for The Hurt Locker. (Her ex-husband James Cameron beat her for the Globe, for Avatar.) Bigelow’s 2010 Oscar win for The Hurt Locker marks the only female director to win the award at either award show in the last decade. This year, Guillermo del Toro received the Golden Globe for his directing of The Shape of Water — but not before Natalie Portman pointed out the “all-male” nominees while introducing the category.
Soon we’ll see how this year’s Globe nominees and winners compare to the Oscar race: The Academy Award nominations will be announced on Jan. 23.