Questions/takeaways from the Golden Globe nominations

As I expected, a pretty weird list, if only because four of the ten movies nominated for either best
drama or best musical/comedy originated on Netflix. (With a theatrical run to qualify them for these awards, of course.)

The cinematic landscape is shifting under our feet, people.

Questions/observations:

1) Who in their right mind considers The Farewell a comedy? (Awkwafina got nominated for best actress in a musical or comedy.)

2) Who in their right mind considers Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a comedy? It’s got funny parts, but it ends in a bloodbath. (Though I guess that bloodbath is supposed to be funny.)

3) I haven’t seen it, but how is Fred Rogers a supporting character in his own movie? (Tom Hanks was nominated for best supporting actor in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.)

4)  J. Lo is a supporting actress in Hustlers. While Constance Wu’s character is undoubtedly the protagonist, you could make the argument that J. Lo is a co-protagonist, if only because we also see her at work trying to get time off from her boss, etc. In other words, we don’t only see her through Wu’s character’s eyes. But maybe she has a better chance of winning in this category.

5) The assigning of Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas as lead actors for Knives Out makes the assigning of J. Lo as a supporting actress for Hustlers even stranger. Plus, although Craig may be my favorite part of a movie I didn’t like as much as most people, I wouldn’t necessarily call it “good acting.”

Takeaways:

1)  Joker is considered best picture material. I can’t grasp this. I know there are people who liked it, but I’m not entirely sure if I trust them. Then again, one of my foundational movie critics as a twentysomething was Owen Gleiberman, then of Entertainment Weekly and now of Variety, and he named it as his #1 movie of the year.

2) Bombshell may be more than just this year’s year-end release about a recent historical event. There’s at least one every year. (Other recent examples: I, Tonya and The Front Runner.)

3)  I only heard about The Two Popes for the first time like five days ago. It’s all over these nominations. And since it’ll be on Netflix starting December 20^th, I’ll be able to rank it this year.

4)  I know it got nominations for best director, best screenplay and best foreign language film, but Parasite’s absence from the best drama list is a major failure to recognize the most critically acclaimed film of the year. Actually, best comedy could also have been an appropriate category. I wonder if Oscar will follow suit. 

5) It was not a great year for animation if the top contender for best animated feature is Toy Story 4.

Were some of these questions/observations actually takeaways, and were some of these takeaways actually questions/observations?

In a topsy-turvy year, anything’s possible.