81st Golden Globe Awards Reaction

Watching the recipients of the 81st Golden Globe Awards try to make their way to the stage through a tricky seating chart generated humorous moments of suspense this evening. As far as the winner themselves, there were less surprises. The show, however, wasn’t completely devoid of unexpected victors in the cinematic races. I’ll also add that Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig’s musical related bit before they presented was easily the comedic highlight in a rather dull show (with some weak hosting from Jo Koy).

I went 12 for 15 in my picks as it turned out not to be the Barbenheimer show. The latter portion of that fresh word in the lexicon was correct as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was the most celebrated picture with five Globes: Best Film (Drama), Director (Nolan), Actor in a Drama (Cillian Murphy), Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), and Original Score. I correctly picked all of those (as I did all the acting derbies I might add). There’s certainly no reason to think anything has changed with my longtime feeling that Oppenheimer is #1 in the Oscar BP rankings where it has been perched for months.

Four other movies posted two wins. Anatomy of a Fall was responsible for one of my misses as it won Best Screenplay over my Barbie call. That was genuinely unanticipated while its victory for Non-English Language Film was not. This is a nice show for the French mystery as it’s considered a question mark for the Academy’s BP race (tonight helps).

Poor Things took Best Film (Musical/Comedy) in another race where I selected Barbie. As anticipated, Emma Stone was the Musical/Comedy actress winner.

The Holdovers was recognized in Musical/Comedy for Actor (Paul Giamatti) and Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). For the latter, this could be the start of several podium trips.

Barbie also took a pair of prizes. Yet it didn’t emerge in its highest profile categories. Instead it took Best Song and the newly (and oddly) coined Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. In short, it was not an overly successful evening for Greta Gerwig’s phenomenon.

Lily Gladstone is your Best Actress (Drama) for Killers of the Flower Moon and you can expect future awards shows will be a showdown between her and Emma Stone.

Finally, my other miss was The Boy and the Heron being named Animated Feature over the favored Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I still think Spidey is out front for the Oscar, but it could be a real competition.

All in all: a great evening for “enheimer” and Ferrell/Wiig dance moves. Not as much for “Barb”.