The biggest precursors to the Oscars have been announced – below you will find the nominations for this year’s Golden Globe Awards.
Best Motion Picture, Drama
Boyhood
Foxcatcher
The Imitation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Best Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical
Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Into The Woods
Pride
St. Vincent
No huge surprises here and we are starting to see some trends taking place. Again, Boyhood is a lock. A super lock for a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. Time to add The Imitation Game to that list as well – the pedigree of the cast, the weight of the story, and the decent reviews are enough to push it into “sure-thing” territory. The Theory of Everything seems to be a shoe-in, but I’m worried by the box office. It has gone wide already and American audiences seem to be ignoring it. I don’t think that’s enough to keep it out of the Best Picture shortlist, but it will hurt its chances when it comes to winning anything substantial in February.
Big bumps for Foxcatcher and the steady rise to prominence for Selma is something to keep our eye on. Notable snubs are ones that I expected last month on The Nerdgasm Podcast: Gone Girl and Interstellar didn’t get much love from the Hollywood Foreign Press. Another missing piece? Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, which has been dealt a crippling blow that I don’t think it can recover from. Plus she’s dealing with some fallout from the whole Sony Pictures email leak thing, so it looks like Unbroken is falling out of favor. If the Hollywood Foreign Press can’t get behind Jolie, then the rest of the film industry is likely not to as well.
Usually Comedy/Musical category where one nominee makes it on the Best Picture ballot in January…seems like nothing has changed in that department. Birdman has been a contender since the beginning of fall, but that distant release date isn’t going to help keep in fresh in people’s minds. Will they go with an expanded re-release of sorts after the inevitable Best Picture nomination? I think so, and it would do them some good but it is just too damn weird for me to think that it has a shot at upsetting Boyhood.
The only other film on here which I think has a legitimate chance of cracking the 5-10 nominees for Best Picture is not Disney’s musical Into The Woods, the LGBT surprise hit Pride, or the Bill Murray-helmed St. Vincent, but Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. It’s getting all types of love this awards season and the director’s nomination in the Best Director category goes to show you how many fans he has. If the category pushes near ten nominees this year, expect it to make the cut. Stunning absence here for Inherent Vice, which appears funny enough to move over to this category and reign supreme but apparently the Press, who have been fans of Paul Thomas Anderson in the past, didn’t like this newest outing.
Best Director
Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ava Duvernay, Selma
David Fincher, Gone Girl
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Don’t get your hopes up – at least two of these (Anderson and David Fincher) will likely miss out to some inexplicably boring directors. Ava Duvernay will be this year’s indie darling first-timer, so congrats to her getting Selma this far into the 2014 conversation. Iñárritu and Linklater have been certified for months, but who is actually going to get those last two spots? Probably Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game and Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher, but only if the love continues to pour into his cast. If either of those two guys fail to garner devotion among voters, I can see Fincher squirming into the slot more than Anderson.
Best Actor, Drama
Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler
David Oyelowo, Selma
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything
Best Actor, Comedy/Musical
Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Michael Keaton, Birdman
Bill Murray, St. Vincent
Joaquin Phoenix, Inherent Vice
Christoph Waltz, Big Eyes
This is where it gets tough – there are only six true contenders this year for Best Actor. That’s one too many, so who is going to miss this year’s ballot? If it was voted on today, David Oyelowo or Jake Gyllenhaal would squeeze Steve Carell out of that fifth spot. Just a feeling I have because people aren’t knocked out by him in Foxcatcher and for the “funny man goes straight” trick to work, people need to be shocked. More people are talking about Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo than Carell in early responses. So here, the Globes didn’t surprise us at all. Sub in Michael Keaton into the Drama list and call that your Best Actor nominees for 2014.
Best Actress, Drama
Jennifer Aniston, Cake
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Best Actress, Comedy/Musical
Amy Adams, Big Eyes
Emily Blunt, Into the Woods
Helen Mirren, The Hundred-Foot Journey
Julianne Moore, Map to the Stars
Quvenzhané Wallis, Annie
Yawn. The Drama category just spoiled the Oscars for you. This has been the most crushingly boring category this year.
Best Supporting Actor
Robert Duvall, The Judge
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
Edward Norton, Birdman
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
Hmm…I could see this happening in January. This is the same group of guys from the SAG Awards shortlist, so I think they’ve firmly marked their territory. But is anyone going to beat J.K. Simmons this year? He put in the most talked about performance of the year, and he’s in a SUPPORTING role. I haven’t seen people this crazy about the Supporting Actor race since Christoph Waltz ran the table with Inglourious Basterds.
Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Emma Stone, Birdman
Meryl Streep, Into the Woods
I thought that maybe Laura Dern would slide into the Globes supporting category for Wild, but instead we are treated with another typically boring slate of people. Like the Actress category, this is practically wrapped up. Not a ton of competition amongst the ladies this year.
