Who votes for the Golden
Globes, anyway? The top-of-the-year awards ceremony used to be hosted by the
Hollywood Foreign Press, a small cadre of foreign journalists known for their
eccentricity, their snootiness, and their willingness to be bought by the
highest bidder. (A “new star of the year” statuette for Pia Zadora? Really?)
After an outcry a few years back about the group’s ongoing racist inclinations, there was a complex reshuffling of the Globes’ voting bloc, and I don’t pretend to know who’s in charge now. I do know, though, several key things. First of all, that the event still tries to present itself as the awards season’s best party, with attendees served a festive dinner and booze flowing like water. Secondly, that awards go to both movie and TV bigshots (crafts categories are pretty much ignored). And, thirdly, that best picture and best actor awards are divided between dramas, on the one hand, and comedies or musicals on the other. This divvying up of films by genre perhaps made sense at one time: at the Oscars great comic performances have often been overlooked in favor of actors playing dead-serious roles. But the categorizing at the Globes often leads, as it did this year, to some head-scratching choices. Take the Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy category. It’s easy to see that Wicked belongs there. But what about Anora, A Real Pain, The Substance, and the ultimate winner, Emilia Pérez? Yes, they might contain hilarious moments, but films in which the heroine suffers a ghastly fate don’t strike me as fundamentally funny. Nor does a movie whose climax is a visit to a Polish concentration camp.
Host Nikki Glaser, who’s been receiving major plaudits for her performance, got off some good lines in her opening monologue, which nicely skewered Hollywood pomposity. I enjoyed her intro of “two-time Holocaust survivor” Adrien Brody, but particularly appreciated her canny reference to “the hardest-working actors in the room,” the ones that were busy serving the meal on which celebrities in tight outfits were cautiously nibbling. In the later innings, though, Glaser didn’t seem to have much to say. She DID show up in a series of glamorous gowns, each designed to show us she has two breasts in working order. (Breasts were definitely star attractions among the ceremony’s female contingent.) At one point Glaser started in on a song mashing up Conclave and Wicked’s “Popular.” I had high hopes for comedy gold, but her “Pope-ular” stopped almost as soon as it started. As for other great funny moments, fuhgeddaboudit . . . except when an impish Seth Rogen and a priceless Catherine O’Hara admitted to the awards they’d supposedly won (like The Golden Antler and The Beaver) in their native Canada. Theirs was the only appearance that had me laughing out loud.
What about the winners? The prize for most emotional definitely went to Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role (yes, that’s how they put it), Zoe Saldaña, who seemed overcome by her win to the point of choking up, and then couldn’t stop talking. Having seen Emilia Pérez, I agree that she earned her award. Almost equally emotional (and equally voluble) was Adrien Brody, Best Male Actor in a Motion Picture--Drama for another much-honored flick, The Brutalist. Demi Moore was articulate and touching in explaining how The Substance (a comedy??) gave her a new lease on her professional life, in keeping with the film’s own themes. But the #1 surprise was Fernanda Torres of Argentina, for the Brazilian I’m Still Here, beating out some of Hollywood’s finest. This I’ve gotta see!
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