Gold-ology 1-18-09

One week after the Golden Globe winners were announced, and what can we really determine from that in relation to the upcoming Academy Award nominations?  Not really much.  There are a couple of really interesting things about the Golden Globe Awards to note that make it a frustratingly relevant awards show during the season.  First, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is only a body consisting of about 35 international reporters.  So, while for some reason the media tends to give a lot of weight to the value of the awards, it's hard to put them above any other critics groups in the overall context of the awards season.  There are a couple of reasons why the Golden Globes receive more notoriety than many other awards ceremonies.  As a network aired ceremony, the Golden Globes receive a great deal of visibility to a national audience.  And the other main reason is that it's an ceremony that rewards both Television AND Film, so it's one of the few awards that combines both mediums and features and rewards stars from both TV and Movies at once.  If there were any other awards that featured both aspects, they would most likely receive the same amount of notoriety as well.

So realizing that the Golden Globes are really more a product of their press, rather than the virtue of their awarding body, does this mean that their influence on the Academy members is minimal?  Not really.  In fact, what it effectively does is give more visibility to the winners, which is crucially important AFTER the nominees are announced, rather than before.  At the time when the Golden Globes are aired, the nomination ballots are just about due (about a one day difference), so it shouldn't be a shock when a Golden Globe winner isn't nominated for an Oscar.  So while the nominees are decided, a winner at the Golden Globes can help bring visibility to a performance or a film that the Academy members may feel a greater urgency to consider when picking their winner.

As for this year's ceremony, I think the Golden Globes only further confirmed the frontrunner status for SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (In this case, the fact that the other films lost only diminished their chances, rather than improving SLUMDOG's), I think the categories that were shaken up by the Golden Globes' results were the acting categories.  Notably, Best Actor and Actress.  Up until the Golden Globes, it seemed like Sean Penn was a lock for MILK, and anyone BUT Kate Winslet for her respective roles.  With the win for Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet in TWO categories, things could get very interesting next month.  Again, while the fact that they won may not influence anything, the visibility of the awards and the wins will probably force Academy members to take note.

In a year that, so far, has been a bit anti-climactic (we'll see if that changes on Thursday), the Academy might want to shake things up when they award the winners in Feb.  If there is one thing that tends to be a recurring theme with the Academy Awards lately, it's that the Academy doesn't like to be told what to like and what to award.  Again, while the Golden Globes are far from an accurate prediction of who the winners will be come February, they can certainly provide or take away the slightest bit of momentum and visibility needed to get a win.