OSCARS NEXT Golden Globes to launch a pandemic-era Hollywood awards season

LOS ANGELES: Hollywood’s award season kicks off on Sunday at a very different Golden Globes, with a mainly virtual ceremony set to boost or dash the Oscars hopes of early frontrunners like Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Usually a star-packed, laidback party that draws Tinseltown’s biggest names to a Beverly Hills hotel ballroom, this pandemic edition will be broadcast from two scaled-down venues, with essential workers among the few in attendance.

Deprived of its usual glamour, the Globes remain a coveted prize, and a high-profile source of momentum in the run-up to the season-crowning Oscars, which were pushed back this year to April.

Nomadland, Chloe Zhao’s paean to a marginalised, older generation of Americans roaming the West in rundown vans, has long been viewed as a frontrunner for the Globes’s top prize. But it will face stiff competition from Aaron Sorkin’s Chicago 7, a courtroom drama about the city’s anti-war riots in 1968 with an ensemble cast including Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne and Sacha Baron Cohen. Both films are fuelled by their timely themes of protest and joblessness. “I think that it’s likeliest between them,” said The Hollywood Reporter’s awards columnist Scott Feinberg. “And then the spoiler, if something were to come out of left field, would probably be Promising Young Woman, which is just unlike anything else in recent memory.” Its star Carey Mulligan -- playing a revenge-seeker who lurks at bars, feigning drunkenness to lure men into revealing their own misogyny -- is tipped by many to win best actress.

The other films vying for best drama, the most prestigious prize, are -- David Fincher’s ode to Citizen Kane -and The Father starring Anthony Hopkins.

The organisation has voted for just one female as best director in 77 editions -- and only ever nominated five women in the category before -- but Nomadland director Zhao is tipped to buck that trend. The race to emulate Barbra Streisand’s 1984 win for Yentl has two other contenders: Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) and Regina King (One Night in Miami). “This is a year when women have strong movies... that is good news, and deserving,” said Deadline awards columnist Pete Hammond. “But we’ll see how it goes -- in the end, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, two white guys, may win.”