Tonight are the Golden Globes (is the Golden Globes?).
The award show to hand out the Golden Globes is *TONIGHT*. The globes are usually a good indicator of who will be winning the Academy Award for the same prize and so I look over the list of movies that are nominated and…
Well. I feel like when I check out at the grocery store and see the names and faces on the celebrity magazines and think that I didn’t know who those people were, I didn’t know that they were dating, so the headline expressing shock that they’re breaking up seems to be completely coming out of nowhere. But then you see something about the royal family and feel better for a moment because, at least, you know who those people are.
You can check out the list of nominees here and bone up on who the players are.
The supporting roles are where the meat usually is and I’ve releaded the page a couple of times and they randomize how the pictures are shown and that’s kind of a good idea. Don’t bias the viewers.
Anyway, Best Supporting Actress: Hong Chau from Downsizing, Allison Janney from I, Tonya, Laurie Metcalf from Lady Bird, Octavia Spencer from The Shape of Water, and Mary J. Blige from Mudbound.
Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe from The Florida Project, Armie Hammer from Call Me By Your Name, Richard Jenkins from The Shape of Water, Christopher Plummer from All The Money In The World, and Sam Rockwell from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The Best Picture are the other ones to keep your eye on: Dunkirk, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Call Me By Your Name.
And I look at that and think “oooh! I hope that Guillermo del Toro’s movie wins a lot of those!”
The main thing that I tend to look for is the number of overlap between “best picture” and “best supporting” and that’s the indicator that tells me what’s most likely to win “best picture” which tells me that The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards seem to be the strongest going into the Globes.
But given that I haven’t really heard of the overwhelming majority of those, I have to conclude that I know precious little about this year’s batch of contenders and so cannot recommend that you use my recommendations for wagering.
So… which of those have you seen?
So, Lady Bird takes place in Sacramento, with an all-girls Catholic high school being a central part of it. I used to live about 2 blocks from that HS. The director, Greta Gerwig, attended the school while my friend Danny’s daughter was there. Small world.
I started reading Camus’ The Fall again. So nice to read something that makes you think. Also, speaking of Sacramento, I am reading a history of the McClatchy company, Papers of Permanence. My son went to McClatchy high school in Sacramento, which has Joan Didion, Anthony Kennedy and the Deftones as alumni.Report
One of the best lines in that movie: “Sacramento is the midwest of California.” Made me realize that culturally the midwest is not a place but a state of mind.Report
I’m reading Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman.Report
Loved that book (maybe not the right way to express myself here, given the subject matter). Really great prose describing various horrors.Report
I have not seen a single one of the movies you mention in the OP.
I did watch all 2 seasons of Sirens on Netflix this week – so funny, so raunchy, and yet never once made me feel like it thought people like me didn’t have a right to exist. Cheerfully offensive, with heart. Exactly what I was in the mood for. And I now fully grasp the love many of my people have for Kevin Daniels.
I’m reading bits and pieces of all sorts of serious and unserious grown-up books but not finishing many of them yet … 18 books read so far this year, but almost all picture books and graphic novels. The cream of the crop among those is Louis Undercover by Fanny Britt – much more real than most comics with 12-ish year old protagonists are, but without veering into the cadence of a “problem novel”.
I’ve also been listening to old episodes of the Mash-Up Americans podcast like whoa. Caught up to January of last year….Report
Oh, also I saw Pitch Perfect 3 with he who is known in these comments as Fish. Twas exactly as over-the-top and delightful as I hoped it would be.
And I read Irvin Yalom’s Becoming Myself, the most purely memoir of any of the books he’s written …. it was more fragmentary than I expected but also a compelling read, especially given how much affection for him and his writing I already hold. If only every 80-something genius could write something so good, we’d be holding a lot more collective wisdom in our hands.Report
Pitch Perfect 3 was gobs of fun. I didn’t see it 3 listed above as a best picture nominee. Ah, perhaps it was too late in the season to get in this year, but surely next year?Report
I was disappointed in PP3, which is kind of surprising given that I went in with fairly low expectations. I enjoyed the first two movies, in part because I’m a sucker for silly competitions (even fictionalized) and I really enjoy cool live performances (again, even fictionalized). I didn’t mind the rampant silliness of the movie — though found it less enjoyable than the rampant silliness of the previous two — but just felt like there wasn’t really all that much singing nor very much fun singing.Report
I’ve gotten used to not seeing the performances/movies in question, but usually at least I’ve heard of them. This year it’s only the ads for Dunkirk and The Post that have kept me from batting .000.Report