Oscar 2012: the Golden Globe Nominations

Until the guilds and the Critics Choice Awards wielded greater influence, the Golden Globes were considered the traditional bellwether of who would eventually be nominated for, and win, Academy Awards. Their choices today still make an impact and keep films and the associated talent in the conversation. If nothing else, they remain an excellent venue for Ricky Gervais to ridicule movie stars in their natural element and for stars to be legitimately inebriated on live television (hello Ryan Philippe in 2006, with Reese Witherspoon’s smile turning into a clenched grin as the evening wore on).

I won’t bore you by explaining how the status quo remains unchanged for The Artist, Hugo, Moneyball, The Descendants and The Help. Look for just about each of these films to receive at least one prize each when the winners are unveiled on January 15. Let’s instead focus on the films that got a boost today from their recognition.

Top of mind is George Clooney’s other effort, his The Ides of March. Everyone knows that the Hollywood Foreign Press, who determines the nominees and winners, absolutely loves Clooney the way the National Board of Review does. This year, they nominated him not just for his almost-assured Oscar nom for The Descendants, they honoured him as a Best Director and a Best Screenplay finalist. Ides was floundering in the race and its four high-profile nominations keep it in the mix. It’s not over for the critically acclaimed fall drama quite yet. In fact, the film’s more serious adult drama tone bears a lot of similarities in the run-up to Oscar for 2007’s Michael Clayton, which also starred Clooney. What Ides needs to be kept top of mind are nominations from the producers’, writers’ and directors’ guilds to make a serious play for Oscar.

Another double nominee and surprise beneficiary is Ryan Gosling, seemingly everywhere as a leading man this year. Both of his nods this morning are surprises: one for Ides, the other in the Musical / Comedy Actor race for Crazy Stupid Love. He received a Crix Choice nom the other day for Drive, which was considered the stronger of his two films, and which was shockingly shut out yesterday when the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations were announced. Unfortunately, despite all this recognition, Oscar does not honour a body of work and Gosling, a former nominee in 2006 for Half Nelson, might be kept out due not only to the fierce competition for Best Actor, but also by his body of work this year alone. Remember that last year he was cruelly left off the ballot while co-star Michelle Williams landed in the Best Actress race for their Blue Valentine.

Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard in
Midnight in Paris

The Hollywood Foreign Press loves Woody Allen. They were the first group to recognize his major return to form for 2005’s Match Point, and three years ago they named Vicky Cristina Barcelona the best Musical / Comedy Film of 2008. Given the excellent critical and commercial response to this year’s Midnight in Paris, a nominee in four major categories, we should keep the film in conversation for Oscar. It’s not a guarantee of course, but it’s certainly not out of the question. The film’s DVD / Blu-Ray release next week, timed to coincide with the crucial voting period, will remind those critics who initially loved the film in the summer of how worthy it is.

Glenn Close and Janet McTeer are on the upswing again after blanking out at Critics Choice. They both earned SAG nominations yesterday and today they each received Globe nominations as well. It’s not really a surprise that the guild honoured Close, as she is a veteran actress well-respected and loved by her peers. What she needs is to hit the circuit hard and remind everyone that Albert Nobbs is a passion project. She played the role onstage in the early 80s, when it was an obscure play, then lobbied for the last 30 years to get it filmed. The added bonus is that Close co-wrote the script and is a double nominee, having also been nominated for co-writing the film’s song. Critical response to the film has been soft, but given the goodwill she has earned from her peers and her continuously remarkable work on television in the last few years, including Damages, The Lion in Winter and The Wire, Close should find herself invited to the Kodak in some way, shape or form.

Cinematically Inclined: Midnight in Paris

Want a little intellect with your cinema? Woody Allen’s latest concoction, Midnight in Paris, is a joyful piece of tantalizingly literary cinematic candy.

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a Hollywood screenwriter engaged to a Park Avenue princess (Rachel McAdams). They are on holiday in Paris with her moneyed Republican parents. Mother and daughter are the sort who enjoy art not for art’s sake, but for its acquisitional value. They run into a couple she knows, in particular a dilettante (Michael Sheen) who enjoys correcting local tour guides on the information they provide in their tours. Needless to say, this is the type who does not take kindly to being corrected, even in the face of irrefutable evidence.

One evening at midnight, Gil is wandering around and comes to a stop at a particular street corner. A car pulls up and invites him to attend a party. He accepts, unaware that the party acts as a time machine to the 1920s. How does he know about that the party takes place in that era? He meets Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald at that party, that’s how. Soon, every night, he is at that same street corner and whisked away to drink with Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), take editorial meetings with Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and hobnob with the Surrealists. Tampering his enthusiasm somewhat is the angelic Adriana. She is a flapper girl who blithely declares that Paris in the 1920s just isn’t that great, not compared to the belle époque of the turn of the century. Pretty soon, the future in-laws suspect that Gil’s up to something and the fiancée is spending increasingly more with the dilettante …

  

At this stage in his career, Allen has moved beyond the confines of his nebbish New Yorker persona. Gone is the neurotic, therapy-heavy, self-deprecating humour that tied so much of his previous work to Manhattan. Given the continuing propensity of Hollywood to make craptcular, mass-marketed action films, Allen wisely makes all of his films in Europe, with European money. It’s a great decision that has rejuvenated his creative spurt. Since 2005, he has produced the Bergman-esque thriller Match Point, the sexy ménage-a-trois comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and now Midnight in Paris. It’s appeared that The Old World has released new creative juices in our favourite neurotic Manhattanite.