70th Golden Globe Award Winners

Last night, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) held their annual Golden Globe Awards, celebrating the best of filmmaking and television in 2012. This blog post will be focusing on the film awards, though for those who are interested, Showtime series Homeland and HBO series Girls won the majority of the Drama and Comedy or Musical TV awards, and HBO movie Game Change won several Miniseries or TV Movie awards. 

Before I get started breaking down the winners, let's just clarify what exactly the Golden Globes are for those who are unsure. The HFPA consists of 93 journalists, journalists from around the world who write entertainment articles in a variety of newspapers and magazines. The only prerequisite for entry is writing four entertainment articles... a year. I'm not even a paid journalist and I try to write at least two entertainment articles a week. I know of journalists who write more than four articles in a day. 

That being said, I enjoy the Golden Globes for what they are: a schmaltzy, entertaining, and oftentimes overrated awards show that features drunken celebrities. It gets viewers excited about the much more legitimate, much more prestigious Academy Awards presentation later this year. The Golden Globes sometimes manages to predict winners of the Oscars, and for that, people view the Golden Globes as an important part of the Awards Season. So, I will demonstrate this aspect by breaking down it's winners and losers, as well as this award's impact on the Academy Awards. For that is the most important trait of the Golden Globes: to get people interested in talking movies, and talking about the ever important award celebrations. 

During last night's presentation of the 70th Golden Globes, Argo took home Best Picture and Best Director, the Globe's two biggest movie prizes. The wins are an important boost for Argo, which was snubbed an Oscar nomination for Best Director last week. Ben Affleck fortunately does not seem too affected, and the stars at the Globes gave him a standing ovation when he managed to beat Steven Spielberg, Kathryn Bigelow, Ang Lee, and Quentin Tarantino for the award. However, although Argo is winning several awards now, don't expect the Academy to choose the film as Best Picture; without a bid for Best Director, the film doesn't stand a chance at winning more than a few constellation prizes. Argo's peak, unfortunately, was last night. 

In the acting categories, Lincoln's titular star Daniel Day-Lewis took the much expected Best Actor-Drama prize, after several punchlines made throughout the night about his uncanny acting ability. Day-Lewis is one of the few certainties this Awards Season, an actor who can seemingly transform into anything thrown at him. His role in Lincoln will likely earn him another Best Actor win at the Academy Awards. Best Actor- Musical or Comedy went to Hugh Jackman in Les Miserables, who beat out favorite Bradley Cooper for Silver Linings Playbook. Both are nominated for an Oscar. 

Heavy favorites Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) each won Best Actress- Drama and Best Actress- Musical or Comedy, respectively. Best Actress at the Oscars is coming down between these two leading ladies, both with highly successful years in film. Chastain and Lawrence both deserve to win an Oscar, and in some ways, I wish both could. Their roles are important to breaking down female stereotypes in movies. 

The award for Best Supporting Actor is easily the most wide open race in any category this year. Last night, the HFPA gave Christoph Waltz from Django Unchained the win, though the prize could have gone to any nominee in the category. Waltz, Arkin, Hoffmann, and Jones are returning for the Oscars, in addition to Robert De Niro. The winner at the Academy Awards could be any of these five men, making it easily the most contested category this season. 

Best Supporting Actress went to, no surprise, Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables. Her win is just as guaranteed as Day-Lewis', for she took on a role which forced her to shed weight, shave her hair, and sing one of Broadway's most emotional songs in a single, continuous close-up shot. The Princess of Genovia, as she said, has come a long way. Plus, host Amy Poehler got to poke fun at her for Hathaway's disastrous turn as Oscar host with James Franco. 

According to the HFPA, the Best Foreign Language Film was Amour, and the Best Animated Feature was Brave. Best Screenplay went to Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained. Musically, Life of Pi's composer Mychael Danna beat out John William's score from Lincoln, and a tipsy and excited Adele won Best Original Song with "Skyfall". 

As a show, I enjoyed Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as hosts. They certainly were an improvement over the past three year's host Ricky Gervais, as they were much nicer, funnier, and all around more entertaining. Zingers included a crack about Kathryn Bigelow's "torturous" former marriage to James Cameron, film people mingling with television stars, hosting the show, and Meryl Streep. Jodie Foster won the Cecil B. DeMille honorary award, and gave a touching speech about coming out, time in show business, and her mother. 

Overall, I was impressed by the quality of the awards presentation and the actual winners. I'm looking forward to the rest of Awards Season, because, as of now, it's literally anyone's game.