Drastic shift
The Gold en Globe nominees have a lways been fa milia r na mes. This yea r, however, there a re plenty of surprises.
BETWEEN the two of them, Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese have 23 Golden Globe nominations.
With Sully and Silence, they also have a couple of the most buzzedabout movies of the year.
Yet when the H ollywood Foreign Press Association announced its annual nominations this week, both films were completely shut out.
Instead, the group went with movies from a more upstart field for its 74th ceremony on Jan 8 – including Moonlight, Lion, Hell Or High Water, Hacksaw Ridge and Manchester By The Sea in its best picture/drama category.
The directors of all of those movies had previously combined for just four Golden Globe nominations – and three of those were for Hacksaw helmer Mel Gibson.
The Globes is long known for returning to familiar wells. It’s how Meryl Streep has 30 nominations and eight wins all by herself. H FPA members tend to stay relatively static (there aren’t a lot of incoming or exiting members in a given year) and voters tend to develop relationships with faces on-screen, if not in real life.
But perhaps hoping to end up with some of the fresher nominees the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has aimed for by inviting younger members – or maybe because it’s simply tired of veterans’ work – the H FPA made a decided effort to move away from the tried and true.
In the most striking example, Warren Beatty’s long-awaited comeback, Rules Don’t Apply, was almost completely blanked. That included no nomination for the 79-year-old hyphenate even in the actor in a comedy/musical category, where he was heavily predicted to earn a slot for playing
H ollywood titan H oward H ughes – and despite the fact that he has six previous Golden Globes wins.
The one nominee the film did manage? The 27-year-old Lily Collins, who nabbed a spot for lead actress in a comedy/musical.
Nor was Beatty the only veteran edged out of a place in a comedy/ musical category. Robert D e Niro, a 10-time Golden Globe nominee as well a recipient of its Cecil B D eMille Award, was nowhere to be found, even though the 73-year-old has earned laurels for his turn as an aging stand-up in The Comedian.
Instead of the two legends, the category was filled with the likes of Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds, a first-time nominee who just turned 40 in October, and Jonah H ill, the 32-year-old comic actor who wasn’t anywhere near most awards forecasters’ lists for his turn in the barely remembered summer arms-smuggling picture War Dogs.
Deadpool, incidentally, also was nominated for best comedy/musical, one of the biggest mass-culture phenomena ever to be included in the category.
The Globes have historically liked the new and shiny on the television side. In part because of when it falls in the calendar, the ceremony has historically been among the first to honour upstart series such as Transparent, Mr Robot and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which then have gone on to Emmy and other recognition.
That trend appears to be holding true – four out of the Globes’ five best drama nominees are freshman series ( Westworld, This Is Us, The Crown and Stranger Things), and D onald Glover’s first-year FX show, Atlanta, picked up a nomination for best comedy/musical.
But when it comes to film, the H FPA tends to like its comfort-food nominees – which is how actors like Tom H anks have scored eight nominations over the years, not just for expected fare like Cast Away and Philadelphia but less obvious contenders such as Charlie Wilson’s War.
Yet H anks also came away empty-handed this time around. D espite a thin year for lead actors in a drama, he couldn’t muster a nomination for his role as a courageous real-life pilot in Sully.
The Eastwood film has grossed more than US$200mil (RM882.9mil) around the world and is considered a contender in multiple categories at the Oscars. D itto for Silence, Scorsese’s rigorous look at faith that has been garnering strong word-of-mouth since it began screening for tastemakers almost two weeks ago.
But the 74-year-old filmmaker failed to land a nomination in the directing category for his passion project, yielding to first-timers Barry Jenkins ( Moonlight) and D amien Chazelle ( La La Land), each still in their 30s.
The H FPA is made up of a very small group of people – about 80 foreign journalists with little dayto-day involvement in the creation of movies. So it’s regarded as folly to read too much significance into any one choice; the sample size of voters is simply too small, the idiosyncrasy of voting preferences too great.
Still, taken as a whole, the Globes ballot suggests a larger impulse, perhaps one that’s cultural as much as technical. The nominations echo a Grammys trend last week in which records from relative newcomers like Justin Bieber ( Purpose) beat out longtime favourites such as D avid Bowie
( Blackstar) for album of the year nominations.
Awards shows have long tangled with a dilemma. As a venue for industry recognition, they tend to value dues-paying – rewarding personalities who have put together a long body of work and earned industry goodwill. But the shows also rely for income on a television world that tends to favour, particularly in its advertising dollars, younger viewers and newer talent.
The film ilm academy, which oversee s the Oscars, is among thoset grappling with thi is challenge. In the last few w years, for reasons that of coursec went beyond television viewership, iti began inviting waves ofo newer and compara atively younger r members, an nd it could begin too see some shifts in n voting and view wer numbers (las st year saw an eight-eyear low) as a result.
Rating gs have been fal lling for the Glob bes too. This yea ar, the NBC telecast was down 5% in th he all-important 18-49 demogr aphic. Whethe er part of a consciou us plan or not, the presence of young ger nominees cou uld arrest that slid de.
In feww places will the help p be as evident as lead actress in a com medy/musical. Nom minees were he eavily youthfu ul, with Emma StoneS from La a La Land an nd H ailee Steinfeld d from the teen n seriocomedy y The Edge Of f Seventee en joining Collins o on the shor rt list. Steinfeld, an upset choice of sorts, just exited her teenage years – she turned 20 on Sunday. The median age in her category was 28. Last year it was 45.
(Streep, it should be noted, also landed a nomination for lead actress in a comedy/musical, for her turn as a real-life shaky soprano in Florence Foster Jenkins. Some things don’t change.)
In general, thattha was the pattern across acting caategories, with one or two veteraans popping up amid a largeer group of fresher faces. In suppporting male, three of thee five nominees (D ev Patel, Simon H elberg and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) were all unnder 40, while a fourth, M Moonlight’s Maherrshala Ali, was a heretoofore unknown actorr barely above it. Th at will lead to a scenaario in which some of thee most familiar H ollywwood faces are absennt from the winner circlee.
Thhen again, some oldeer actors may be readdy to give up the manntle.
“JJonah H ill is probably the busiest actor on tthe planet,” H anks receently said to The LA Times’ Glenn Whiipp. “H e was great in War r Dogs. I can never take myy eyes off him.” The H FFPA and NBC can only hoope a lot of other peoplee feel the same way. – Los AAngeles Times/ Tribuune News Service Stone received a nomination in the Best Actress, musical/comedy category for her performance in La La
Land. The musical received a total of seven nominations, leading the Globes nominees list.