The Golden Globes are this Sunday at 8 p.m. on NBC. Wait, sorry, I just fell asleep after typing that sentence. A uniquely pointless and stupid affair, the Golden Globes were briefly touted some years back as a predictor of how the Oscars would go, until people realized that simply wasn't true, and now the Golden Globes exist, and they come on once the football is over and we're drunk anyway so what the hell. Unlike the Oscars, where for as dumb and conservative and predictable as they so frequently are at least one or two memorable things per telecast happens, the Golden Globes are memorable for exactly three things:

1—That time when Ving Rhames lost his damn mind and gave his (deservedly won) Globe to Jack Lemmon and refused to leave the stage until Lemmon came up, confused, to “accept” the award. One of the strangest things I've ever seen on TV.

2—The way that Sarah Jessica Parker managed to win Best Actress on a TV show 25 times in a row (even though “Sex and the City” was only on the air for, what, eight years?) and somehow was all like “Oh my God! This is SUCH a surprise!” every single time. (By about the fourth time this happened, my mom would start going “OHHHH!!! I'M SOOOOOOO SURPRISED!!!” before it was even announced that she had won.)

3—Ricky Gervais' spectacular, awesome, scrumdiddlyumptious hosting performance last year.

He hosted the year before too, but last year was one of the lulziest goddamn things that ever existed. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) gathered a lot of very well-dressed fish into a lavishly appointed barrel into which Ricky Gervais emptied several clips from a very powerful semiautomatic rifle. It was glorious. It was beautiful. The stunned faces of Hollywood's finest, unused to being addressed as anything other than royalty, as Ricky dared—DARED!!!—to make jokes about things like “The Tourist” being a slipshod piece of shit that was only nominated so the HFPA could rub shoulders with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie (which was totally true), and Robert Downey Jr. having done a drug or two in his day (which was also totally true).

The best part about the fact that Ricky Gervais is going to be back this year is that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the HFPA has a grand total of one thing it cares about in the whole wide universe: notoriety. After everyone was scandalized by last year's (AWESOME) performance by Mr. Gervais, the HFPA was like, well, of course we don't want him back, he's dead to us, dead! DEAD! All because they were nervous about stars perhaps skipping the show for fear of being made fun of. Then, of course, time rolled by and people went on with their lives and then, quietly, a while back they were like “Ricky Gervais will be hosting the 69th Golden Globe awards.” Proving that yes, they're whores, but they're whores with a modicum of common sense (Ricky = ratings from people being like “who's he gonna piss off this year?”), even though it's entirely possible that they only asked Ricky back because they know of anybody on Earth he's the most likely to come up with a really, really good “69” joke because it's the 69th Globes.

And, really, he's the only reason to watch this year. There's no guarantee he'll be as awesome as he was last year; for one, part of what made last year so great was no one saw it coming. In fact, the likelihood of his not being as good this year is very high because there are so many ways to go wrong: play it artificially and inorganically mean, play it excessively avant-garde, play it “let's make a Peter Dinklage joke” only to have Peter Dinklage beat the living shit out of him national TV (Peter Dinklage owns all)  . . . the list goes on. Just about the only thing we can be sure of is that Ricky isn't going to play it safe. Anyway, after that lunatic Giants/Packers game ends (trust, that fucking game is going to be really strange) and we're all having our four or five “making sense of it all” beers, and we're all watching the Globes, this is what's going to win:

TV: don't know, don't care, long as Dinklage wins (which I think he will).

MOVIES:

Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation.
Best Animated Feature Film: Either Rango or Tintin. Probably Tintin to suck Spielberg's dick.
Best Original Song: abstention; category is bullshit with no Muppets nominations.
Best Original Score: abstention; category is bullshit with no Attack The Block or Hanna nominations.
Best Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, The Descendants
Best Director: Alexander Payne, The Descendants (yup, over Marty and the French guy)
Best Supporting Actress: Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Best Actress, Musical or Comedy: Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
Best Actor, Musical or Comedy: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Best Actress, Drama: Viola Davis, The Help
Best Actor, Drama: Brad Pitt, Moneyball (apotheosis of HFPA ass-kissing, though he WAS good.)
Best Picture, Musical or Comedy: The Artist
Best Picture, Drama: The Descendants

Bear in mind, this isn't what I think should win, but what I think will based on the way the HFPA usually rolls. None of these wins foretell anything at all for the Oscars. Most of us are still going to be too confused about how the fuck Eli Manning managed to beat the Packers in the late game (cuz you best believe it's not because the Giants are better) to pay much attention to the Globes anyway. Well, by “most of us,” I mean me.

Anyway, enjoy your Sunday evenings, y'all, be it Golden and Globular, or spent on more fruitful pursuits. See ya next week.

Danny Bowes' is a prolific writer and critic who lives in New York City. You can look for his column every Wednesday, and read him online at moviesbybowes.blogspot.com.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed