Golden Globes 2014 – Picks
It's the time that I always lose my pseudo-scientific pragmatism and never win these ballots, when I vote with my heart.

The Golden Globes are a strange critter; put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, they are not technically an industry event, more like an industry-lichen event, which have been taken with fulsome vigor to the Hollywood teat.  They are an odd insoluble mixture, like unstirred salad dressing, of naked tourist fandom and enculturated art house sensibilities. The HFPA are not Hollywood insiders. They are a group of foreign correspondents covering films.

Unlike other foreign correspondents—who are there in a story, creating stories, possibly changing the world, and often the most important person in the situation—these are microbes clinging on the impermeable bubble of Tinseltown, and are never the most famous person in a room (let’s be honest, writing about movies isn’t exactly investigative journalism).  But for one night, strangely, the HFPA is the most important organisation (I won’t say people, because they’re still not invited to parties) in a certain universe.  Oddly—it just sort of happened.  From a gathering of a mere 93 of diasporic journalists in 1943, the Golden Globes are now the second most important date in film industry.

Because of their proximity to the action, the Globes can’t help but get swept up in (both reflecting and creating) the buzz and the tidal zeitgeists (I offer that anyone from anywhere who goes and lives in Los Angeles from October to December can pretty accurately predict the Oscars.) But you never know how they’re going to go—sycophantic star lust or art-house cineastism, all in a never-ending flurry of suspected corruption (like when Pia Zadora won for Best Newcomer for Butterfly—over Elizabeth McGovern, who went on to be nominated for an Oscar, because Ms. Zadora’s multimillionaire husband feted the HFPA in Vegas and in his own home in the hills, or when The Tourist got nominated after Sony gave them a free Cher concert, again in Vegas.  Las Vegas seems to be their Achilles heel).

They do precede and foreshadow the Oscars, but then they also award The Hangover with Best Film.  Hence, Leonardo DiCaprio is the sort of fellow who always gets a nomination, even when often shamefully ignored by the Oscars.  Or where Rush can be nominated alongside 12 Years a Slave for Best Picture.  Or Sally Hawkins can win Best Actress for Happy Go Lucky, or Marissa Tomei can beat Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, Judy Davis… Oops.  Sorry.  That was the Oscars.  What makes the Globes fun is that it can’t wholly predict the Oscars because there are two Best Pictures (Drama and Musical or Comedy—comedies like Driving Miss Daisy and Sideways—humour really doesn’t  translate, apparently), and two Best Actors and Best Actresses (but oddly only one for Supporting Actor and Actress—you’d think fawning outsiders would be more wary of snobby hierarchies).  They also don’t honour cinematography or editing, but they do honour Best TV Mini-Series.  And Hollywood loves it—unlike the staid and ulcerous Oscars, it is a party, with lots of booze on the tables, and the stars are looser and ruder and even scatological (Christine Lahti on winning Best Actress in TV Drama, running up onto the stage wiping her hands: ‘I was just flushing the toilet and someone said, “You’ve won!”’)

Best Picture, Drama

Rush?  Really?  I predict, with 100% certainty that the winner will be based on a true story: four out of the five (and two out of the other category) are true stories. It’s the year of truth!  Apparently it’s down to Gravity and 12 Years A Slave.  Gravity is made up.

Best Picture, Comedy or Musical

Nebraska as a comedy or musical?  It’s about as much a comedy as Philomena is.  This category this year is a Willy Wonka factory of choice, with films by Spike Jones, Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, and David O. Russell.  This is the category that where we once found Dr. Doolittle, Paint Your Wagon, and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. How to pick? Scorsese won’t win, because Wolf of Wall Street seems like light fare for him (unjustly, not a man renowned for his comedies).  American Hustle; a caper film, a very good caper film, in a year of slavery, apartheid, child abduction and institutional Catholic abuse.  It’s energetic, but not hefty enough.  Although it’s sort of Argo.

Haven’t seen Her, but seems unlikely that Jones could get recognized above the others.  Inside Llewyn Davis—probably their best in years, but not monumental in the way that Fargo and No Country For Old Men or even O Brother Where Art Thou? were.  All deserve to win (how can Her be anything but great?).  But it’s Nebraska.  They love Alexander Payne.  It’s his time.  Plus it’s a great movie, plus it’s black and white, plus it’s like we’re in the 1970s, when we had films like Last Detail, King of Marvin Gardens, The Last Picture Show, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown—films that were complex, bleakly humanist, with no unrealistic comic book victories; just simple lives of simple losers whose lives stay pretty much the same.  The characters in these types of films don’t have epiphanies or find the inner strength to win over insurmountable odds—like life; like American life in times of distress. Like in 1974.

Best Actor, Drama

Forgive me, but this is a pragmatic, pseudo-scientific analysis.  Idris Elba.  Not to discount his excellent talent, or the excellent portrayal, but this is a vote for Mandela.  Look at the coverage over the past months, in print, online, on TV.  People will be voting for the man, for the memory, for the loss of one of the most important figures of our generation; our Ghandi, our Churchill, our JFK.  We didn’t think people like this existed anymore.  It will be a sentimental vote, out of grief, out of historical importance.  Idris Elba for Long Walk to Freedom.

Best Actress, Drama

Rich with the roses of the (former) British Empire! Sandra Bullock is the American. But it’s Cate Blanchett.  For one reason: Woody Allen has an alchemically high ratio for his actresses winning (Diane Weist, Diane Keaton, Mira Sorvina, Penelope Cruz). In a year of extremely strong performances, this is simply the best performance, male or female, of the year.  It’s one of Woody’s greatest gifts to any actress (and there have been countless—even Tia Leoni in the otherwise dreadful Hollywood Ending).  Oh no—I feel the pragmatism slipping in!  Blanchett has been so touted, and the film released so long ago, that her wave may have crested (Nb. Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars).  Emma Thompson may win, because Saving Mr. Banks is about Hollywood, and surpassing all other cardinal sins that Hollywood is known for, it’s onanism.  But Cate Blanchett.

Best Actor, Musical or Comedy

Bruce Dern.  Not only is he going to get the thinly-veiled Lifetime Achievement Award, he also won at Cannes, and he also deserves it.  He’s a veteran of Hollywood and was indispensable during its greatest time, the 1970s, and Nebraska, as I’ve said, is a film right out of the 1970s.  He was also in two Hitchcocks.  It’s right and proper and deserved.  Christian Bale in American Hustle (he’s in that period where he’ll be nominated every year for the next few years—like William Hurt used to be after winning for The Kiss Of The Spider Woman), and Leonardo DiCaprio will not win—DiCaprio should have won for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, he was a wunderkind, one of the most talented young actors in several generations, but that time has passed.  He’ll win when he’s older, and get a standing ovation, but this is mid-career.  We’re used to him, to his intense performances, which, lately, are more ‘intense’ than ‘performances.’  He seems to have lost that mischief and joy.  He has to find his older self.  Oscar Isaac’s nomination is a nice thing for him, but appreciation in Hollywood is cumulative.  And Joaquin Phoenix!  His name has never been so illustrative—it’s nice he’s back, and it’s nice he got a nomination.  And it’s nice he hasn’t killed anyone yet.

Best Actress, Musical or Comedy

Meryl Streep, she deserves everything she gets, even if giving her a nomination is controlled by the autonomic nervous system but August: Osage County is one of those little curiosities, lovely, like Hummel figurines, that don’t shake up the world or win awards.  Basically, they’re cooling embers—artistically, Zeitgeistly speaking—in a world of diesel flames.  Their fuel, their frisson, was spent in their original incarnation on the Broadway stage.  They’re scrapbooks, scrapbooks of a success in another art form. And, like scrapbooks, they’re nice to have around, but more as a record of an event than as an event.  Robert Altman specialized in them for a about a decade there (Streamers, Fool For Love, Beyond Therapy, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean), in the late 70s, early 80s, and none are in his pantheon (though some are among his best films).  Another example is last year’s Killer Joe (see?).  It’s also really nice Julie Delpy got a nomination, and likewise Amy Adams, but it’s Greta Gerwig.  Frances Ha is an entity with inertia. The film is a body in motion, and will stay in motion (Newton’s first law).  It’s also a surprise, a scrappy actress eking out an excellent body of work but without amassing a fortune of Hollywood real estate or releasing her own fragrance (that wasn’t metaphorical).  And the Globes tends, recently, to like indie and, um, ‘untraditional’ leading ladies (see Lena Dunham’s wins last year).  So it’s either Julia Louis-Dreyfus (a role playing to all her strengths as an actress, from Elaine to Selena Meyer) or Greta Gerwig, but Gerwig for sure.  Or Louis-Dreyfus.  No, Gerwig, for sure.  But Louis-Dreyfus was…

Best Supporting Actor, Presumably in Anything

Again, how nice for everyone, but it’s Michael Fassbender, who’s always so reliable in the many, many films he’s made in the last few years.

Best Supporting Actress, Presumably in Anything

Jennifer Lawrence won’t win because they don’t like Supporting for one so recently the Best. Lupita Nyong’o—this is a great thing for her.  For a newcomer, a nomination is as valuable as a win to an established actress.  Julia Roberts will suffer the same fate as Meryl Streep.  And June Squibb should win.  Another solid, grounding, performance without vanity or pyrotechnics (also, her character has the best dialogue in the film), but she’s so good you don’t think it’s acting.  Sally Hawkins will win.  If they liked her Happy Go Lucky (eesh), they’ll love her here.  See above for Woody Allen’s talismanic charm for actresses.

Best Director

Alfonso Cuaron?  For Gravity?  Not with that script.  Paul Greengrass for Captain Phillips, a perfectly good film and an excellent director, but I can’t see the film, going down as part of history, being named Best Director or Best Film.

David O. Russell, American Hustle, is fun.  Fun is good.  But fun doesn’t win awards.

Steven McQueen, 12 Years a Slave.  He could get it.  But he won’t.  Because Alexander Payne will, because they love him, all of Hollywood loves him, and they love awarding him.

Best Screenplay

Things are getting murky now.  Harder to predict.  Things turning fuzzy.  It’s Bob Nelson for Nebraska, because it’s so good and, again, is for all the 1970s films that didn’t win.  Philomena is another really nice nomination.  Perhaps Coogan’s star power (they love giving names—Tarantino, Emma Thompson—this one when they can because who wants to see some shut-in mumble) will bring it home.  Plus Coogan is doing something he’s not done, which they like, unexpected potential and all, value-added and all, plus it’s an award-winning story of social injustice and about nailing the system, plus it’s an excellent film. So it’s Alexander Payne.

Best Foreign Language

Blue is the Warmest Color, despite its Cannes success, is still a bit naughty for Hollywood.  It wasn’t so long ago that Ellen Degeneres’ sitcom was cancelled when she came out, and these awards are still buffeted by the winds of Hollywood, even though the Foreign Press Association is, well, a bunch of foreigners.  And just like they’re not investigative journalists, they’re not rebels, for god’s sake.  It’ll be The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino’s take on Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, easily.

Best Animated Feature will be Frozen, because it is, and Best Original Song will be ‘Please Mr. Kennedy’ from Inside Llewyn Davis because it’s Justin Timberlake, and U2 (The Long Walk To Freedom) and Coldplay (Hunger Games II) and Taylor Swift (One Chance) can’t win, despite the ratings they’d bring, because the toadying star-lust would be just too blatant, even for the Globes, and Justin Timberlake is quite a big enough star.