Shock news – popular films in the running for awards
The Golden Globes shortlist suggests movies favoured by cinema-goers might dominate award season, says Tim Robey
The awards season got under way yesterday, as the Golden Globes announced their traditionally wacky list of nominees, and the focus on mainstream success could easily show the Oscars up for their embarrassing attempt this year to boost viewer ratings.
For some while these have been in decline, which is often put down to the shortage of huge hits nominated, and audiences correspondingly not being fussed. As an attempt to combat perceived snobbery, the Academy wanted to introduce a whole new category this year under some rubric of Best Popular Film. Reaction to the idea was so uniformly negative – essentially viewing it as a patronising dumping ground for public favourites – that it was swiftly binned.
And now here the Globes are, opening up the road map for an Oscars that look set to be far more populist anyway without any such helping hand. The likes of Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians crashed the party with major nominations, and the former looks a strong shout now to become the first superhero film with bona fide Best Picture hopes.
If the Academy follow the Globes’ lead in recognising these and some of the year’s other biggest mainstream hits, the aborted innovation will come to seem sillier than ever.
In any case, a populist Oscars is always in danger of being a somewhat mixed blessing. The TV networks will be happy, but if examples of great but undervalued cinema this year are pushed aside in favour of the ones everyone has already seen, the single most helpful purpose of these ceremonies – telling us what great stuff to track down – gets lost.
Before this news, industry expectation favoured the films with people singing – A Star is Born, Mary Poppins Returns, and Bohemian Rhapsody – which picked up respectable tallies of nods, though none of them as many as Vice, Adam Mckay’s forthcoming Dick Cheney comedy-drama, which managed more or less a full house with six.
A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper’s glossy melodramatic remake, is still far and away the bookies’ favourite for an Oscars sweep, with its combination of critical support and knockout box office – $363m (£284m) worldwide and counting, from a remarkably frugal $36m production budget.
Cooper himself looks like an easy favourite for an acting win, but he’s more likely to lose to Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) for Best Director, while Lady