Golden Globes starts on Sunday with a new virtual avatar set to officially kick off Hollywood’s award season. Known to be the pre-cursor to the Oscars, Golden Globes may make or break the chances of mainstream movies winning.
The COVID-19 edition of the awards will be broadcasted from two scaled-down venues in New York and California. Frontline workers will be among the few attending.
The audience and nominees are expected to mainly remain at home, accepting awards via videolink.
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Golden Globes is known to recognise and honour the best in television. The Awards acts as momentum in the run-up to the highly prized Oscars. Oscars have been rescheduled to take place in April, reports AFP.
The Globes ceremony is being held just five days before Oscars voting begins.
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Both films fueled by their timely themes of protest and joblessness, “Nomadland” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” are said to be in the winning race.
Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” has been generating buzz to be a frontrunner at the Golden Globes for quite some time. While Aaron Sorkin’s courtroom drama “Chicago 7” about the city’s anti-war riots in 1968 is giving “Nomadland” stiff competition.
“Chicago 7” stars Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne and Sacha Baron Cohen.
“I think that it’s likeliest between them,” said The Hollywood Reporter’s awards columnist Scott Feinberg.
“Promising Young Woman,” starring Carey Mulligan could be the surprise coming out the left field. Mulligan plays a revenge-seeker who lurks at bars, feigning drunkenness to lure men into revealing their own misogyny. She may just win Best Actress for this role.
“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,” said Feinberg.
Competing against Carey is Frances McDormand and Viola Davis.
The films in the race for winning best drama are “Mank”, “The Father” which got six overall nominations.
Hopkins has never won a competitive Globe despite seven previous nominations, is up against sentimental favourite Chadwick Boseman, the “Black Panther” star who died last August from cancer at age 43.
Boseman is nominated for his kinetic performance in the Marvel movie opposite Davis in “Ma Rainey.”
“This is his best part, and the backstory is that he knew this might be his last performance — so that’s kind of hard to resist,” said Variety awards editor Tim Gray.
Hollywood Foreign Press Association was slammed this week by groups like Time’s Up for failing to admit a single black member. These groups will be closely watching the award show. HFPA has since released a statement that recognizes the need to “bring in Black members, as well as members from other underrepresented backgrounds.”
HFPA has only voted for one woman best directors and nominated only five women directors in the past years. Director Zhao may end this trend.
The race to compete 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.”
Comedian Tina Fey said that she and co-host Amy Poehler have said they want to make the night “a fun hangout for people at home.”
“It doesn’t seem like a venue for political jokes,” Fey said in a podcast hosted by journalist Jill Rappaport.
“The Life Ahead” director Edoardo Ponti told AFP he would be watching from his California home, while his mother and leading lady Sophia Loren remains in Switzerland.
“As soon as I know something, whatever happens, I’ll communicate the news to her,” Ponti said.
Their movie competes for best foreign-language film, in a category featuring acclaimed Korean-American family drama “Minari,” which is viewed by some as an outside Oscar best picture candidate.
