George Clooney and Elisabetta Canalis arrive at the 2010 Golden Globes ceremony. Clooney, up for Up in the Air, lost the best actor (drama) award to Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, but at least he and Canalis didn’t get drenched as they made their way into the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Clooney remains one of the favorites for the 2010 best actor Oscar, though Jeff Bridges will be stiff competition. Bridges has been nominated for four Academy Awards, but he’s never won. Clooney won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2005 for Syriana, a political drama in which he gets his fingers smashed.
Emily Blunt was in the running for best actress (drama) for The Young Victoria, in which she has the title role. Her costar in the film is Rupert Friend, but John Krasinski was her companion on the red carpet. Krasinski has a supporting role in Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated, which was up for the best picture (comedy or musical) Golden Globe.
Courtney Cox (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Emily Blunt, John Krasinski (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Gabourey Sidibe (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Gabourey Sidibe was one of the nominees for the best actress (drama) Golden Globe for her performance as an illiterate, sexually abused teenager in Lee Daniels’ Precious. Sidibe lost to Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, but her costar, Mo’Nique, took home the Best Supporting Actress award. In Precious, Mo’Nique plays Sidibe’s resentful mother. Following wins at the Sundance Film Festival, Precious has turned into one of the biggest arthouse hits of 2009.
At the Golden Globes, Heather Graham joined the Hangover crowd, which also included Justin Bartha, Bradley Cooper, and Ed Helms. The film won the best picture (comedy or musical) award. Among the five nominees in that category, it was by far the highest grosser, with more than $200 million at the domestic box office. Losers included Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated, starring Meryl Streep, and Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer.
Fergie’s Nine, a box office disappointment, failed to win a single Golden Globe. Josh Duhamel’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, wasn’t up for any Globes despite its high grosses. On the other hand, some assert that it’ll be up for several Razzies as the worst film of 2009. Nominations will be announced in early February.
Heather Graham (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Harrison Ford (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
The Golden Globes show ratings were up this year. According to some, that’s because box office friendly movies such as Avatar, The Hangover, The Blind Side, Sherlock Holmes, and It’s Complicated were in the running. Apparently, the impact of television series fans who might have wanted to see Michael C. Hall or Tina Fey is irrelevant. Just as irrelevant is the fact that the Globes were broadcast live for the first time on both coasts.
As per a Hollywood Reporter piece, the Golden Globes ceremony hosted by Ricky Gervais “drew 16.9 million viewers and a 5.4 rating among adults 18-49, according to early, time zone-adjusted estimates.” That’s up 10 per cent from last year. As per the Reporter, it also “marks NBC’s best rating in the time period, excluding sports, in five years.”
The fact that the award presenters line-up included Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Taylor Lautner, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kate Winslet surely didn’t hurt, either.
James Cameron (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Neither Sam Worthington nor Zoe Saldana – or any other Avatar cast member, for that matter – was nominated for a Golden Globe. James Cameron was probably none too pleased. As Steven Zeitchik reports in his Los Angeles Times blog, Cameron remarked that “everything [that the avatars in the movie] do is determined by the actors … There’s a bit of a learning curve for the acting community to really understand what we did.”
Tom Hanks’ “nice guy” image nearly came crashing down when he said that Meryl Streep goes to bed with Alec Baldwin in the best picture (comedy or musical) nominee It’s Complicated, and that she goes to bed with Stanley Tucci in her other comedy nominee, Julie & Julia. Hanks added that Streep’s second partner was “a substantial move up” from her first. Tucci, though a step up on Streep’s sex ladder, didn’t seem to find the joke funny. Some other audience members didn’t, either, as some loud oooooooohhhhhs were heard in the room.
A similar reaction greeted host Ricky Gervais when he made a joke about presenter Paul McCartney traveling coach so as to save money, an allusion to McCartney’s expensive divorce last year. McCartney then plugged Robert Zemeckis’ planned 3D remake of Yellow Submarine, and told the audience that “animation is not just for children, but it’s also for adults who take drugs.”
That may well explain why so many animated films are major hits the world over.
Paul McCartney (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
“You’re really screwing up my under-appreciated status here,” said 40-year film veteran Jeff Bridges as he accepted his Golden Globe for best actor (drama) of the year. In Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart, Bridges plays an aging, troubled country singer who has a “healing” affair with a much younger journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
Although he’s been mentioned as a favorite for the Oscars – a sort of career achievement award for the four-time nominated actor – the Golden Globe was expected to go to George Clooney for his corporate-downsizing expert in Up in the Air. After all, the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are well known for their love of big movie stars. Additionally, Clooney has won most best actor awards from critics groups in the United States (though that could be because many of them haven’t watched the much smaller Crazy Heart, yet).
Kate Hudson’s Nine, the expensive Rob Marshall-directed musical in which she plays one of the many women in Daniel Day-Lewis’ life, failed to win a single Golden Globe. Nine, a movie version of the Broadway show that itself was a musicalized adaptation of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, received mostly mediocre reviews and did poor business. Oscar chances are iffy, but since Oscarexpert Harvey Weinstein is pushing Nine don’t be too surprised if it ends up getting a whole array of Oscar nominations – including best picture – and perhaps even a statuette or two.
Kate Hudson (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Sandra Bullock (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Last year’s top box office star in the United States, Sandra Bullock won the best actress (drama) Golden Globe for The Blind Side, in which she plays a conservative, well-to-do matriarch who adopts an inner-city teenager. I don’t think it should come as a surprise to anyone that somewhere along the way Bullock’s character discovers there’s plenty of room for compassion inside her heart. The actress is also up for this year’s SAG Award, and will most likely get an Oscar nomination next Feb. 2.
Toni Collette’s Golden Globe win was for best actress in a television series (comedy or musical), The United States of Tara. The Sydney-born Collette had previously been nominated for three Globes: Muriel’s Wedding (1995, comedy or musical), Little Miss Sunshine (2006, comedy or musical), and Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006, supporting TV actress). Collette’s sole Oscar nomination was for her supporting performance in the 1999 blockbuster The Sixth Sense.
Nicole Kidman will next be seen in John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, in which she costars opposite Aaron Eckhart. In the film, a couple must cope with the sudden death of their young son.
Nicole Kidman (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Toni Collette (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
Among others attending the Golden Globes were Harrison Ford and Reese Witherspoon.
Michael C. Hall (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA).
Michael C. Hall has been undergoing cancer treatment, which explains the skullcap he was wearing at the Golden Globes ceremony. The Dexter star won the best actor (television series, drama) Globe; during his acceptance speech he remarked, “It’s really a hell of a thing to go to work at a place where everyone gives a damn. That’s definitely the case with Dexter. It’s an amazing group from top to bottom … It’s a dream job, and I’m so grateful.”
Hall’s skullcap was mocked (via Twitter) by a New York Times blogger ignorant of Hall’s condition; the writer later apologized. According to reports, Hall’s illness is in complete remission.
Lauren Graham was nominated for a Golden Globe back in 2002, as best actress (television series, drama) for Gilmore Girls. Her co-presenter in the photo below is Jim Parsons one of the stars of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
“I like a drink as much as the next man … unless the next man is Mel Gibson,” said Ricky Gervais as he introduced Gibson, who, until he began working on his latest vehicle, the thriller Edge of Darkness, had kept pretty much to himself since his drunken driving to-do a few years back. (Not counting his tabloidized – and very expensive – divorce.) Some found Gervais’ joke daring (though not daring enough), but according to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood, Gervais called Gibson beforehand to make sure it was okay. Gibson gave the Golden Globes’ host his consent.
Finke adds that Gibson was much less agreeable when Sam Rubin, of the Los Angeles television station KTLA, asked him about his time away from the screen since the drunken driving incident and his widely reported anti-Semitic tirades. Gibson leaned forward in an aggressive manner, saying, “I gather you have a dog in this fight. … Do you have a dog in this fight?” Rubin is Jewish. (You can watch a clip from the interview here.)
“The winner for Most Incoherent Speech,” wrote Richard Corliss in Time, “would have to go to Drew Barrymore, whose thank-you — in recognition for her work in the HBO mini-series Grey Gardens — was a ditsy dither that seemed to channel both Sarah and Michael Palin.”
No one, however, could accuse best actor (television movie or miniseries) Kevin Bacon (below) of having made an incoherent speech, which included a thank-you to the family of the subject of the HBO drama, Taking Chance. Backstage, when asked about the Haiti earthquake Bacon remarked, “You feel weird, you feel guilty putting on your monkey suit. But on the flip side, it’s good to come out to talk about it.”
Mo’Nique’s speech at the Golden Globes this past Sunday was the evening’s highlight for some. According to Brian Brooks at indieWIRE, the best supporting actress winner had already delivered a memorable speech the previous evening at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s awards dinner, held at the Century City Intercontinental Hotel. (About a stone’s throw from the Globes’ Beverly Hilton Hotel.)
Mo’Nique explained that she hadn’t been looking at the Precious rushes, and only realized the impact of her performance as Gabourey Sidibe’s abusive mother after she received a phone call from director Lee Daniels.
“Lee said to me, ‘Bitch!’ I mean, he said to me, ‘Biiiiiitch! You gave me far more then I could have ever expected…”
I wonder if Rob Marshall paid similar compliments to his female Nine cast members. Imagine Marshall praising Dame Judi Dench or Nicole Kidman (below) that way. But then again, apart from Golden Globe and SAG Award nominee Penélope Cruz and Critics Choice nominee Marion Cotillard, the Nine women haven’t fared all that well this awards season. Perhaps not many compliments were forthcoming during the shoot, anyhow.