Recap of the 69th Annual Golden Globes Awards (film only)

Well that was a build up to a whole lot of nothing, hunh? After Ricky Gervais made headlines with his snarky jokes and sharp jabs at the Hollywood elite and it was such a big deal that they said he would never come back to host the show…only to be asked to come back and host the show. Building up to the insipid event, Mr. Gervais promised he would go harder than he did last year and would really knock everyone on their respective asses.

This definitely did not happen. Gervais had a few good jokes in there, definitely a few stingers, but nothing that outrageous or crazy. This year everyone had the sense of being in on the joke from the get go, rendering the whole “attack” moot because everyone was ready for it. It didn’t help that Gervais seemed to be pulling back anyway and never went that hard at anyone. It would seem his biggest coup was getting Johnny Depp to admit that he had never even watched The Tourist, but then again Depp has admitted before that he doesn’t bother to watch the movies he works on that he knows will turn out awful, like Pirates 2 through 4. So compared to last year’s show, this one seemed surprisingly toothless. Oh well.

As for the awards themselves, picked by a random group of journos calling themselves the Hollywood Foreign Press, the choices weren’t awful at all, if not middle of the road and uninspiring. The Artist took home the most awards, with lead actor Jean DuJardin winning Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy and the film winning Best Comedy or Musical and Best Score. That was followed by The Descendants winning two awards, one for George Clooney’s lead performance and one for Best Drama, while the Best Director award ended up going to Martin Scorsese for Hugo.

The rest of the film awards were swooped up by a very random list of folks. No one was surprised by Meryl Streep winning Best Actress in a Drama for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Woody Allen, who ditched the proceedings, won for Best Screenplay for Midnight in Paris, and it was interesting to see Michelle Williams win Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe, who herself won the same award many years ago. And Octavia Spencer winning the Best Supporting Actress award for her work in The Help was nice to see because of how emotional she got, since she obviously appreciated winning. And best of all was Christopher Plummer winning Best Supporting Actor for his role as an 80-year old cancer-ridden gay father in Beginners, and he quickly added a ton of class to an otherwise trashy and gaudy event. Also adding some class was Sydney Poitier coming out to present the Cecil B. DeMille Award to Morgan Freeman for all of his years of being awesome.

The Adventures of Tintin won Best Animated Film, and it would have been neat if Spielberg also won awards for War Horse, which itself was nominated a bunch, but alas, he’ll have to settle for the one statue this year. Madonna won Best Original Song for a song she did for her new movie W.E. and while accepting her award she took a jab at Elton John, and the camera cut to Elton John looking all bloated and pissed off and that was humorous. And Best Foreign Film went to A Separation from Iran, which is an interesting choice considering the current political climate between Iran and our own country. But A Separation is indeed supposed to be a very good film, so I look forward to finally getting a chance to see it.

And that’s the movie half of the 69th Annual Golden Globes Awards, and I will not go into the television half because most television is complete garbage, and anyway they didn’t give Best Actor in a TV Show to Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad, so screw them.

The Results

Best Screenplay = Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris)

Best Score = The Artist

Best Original Song = Madonna (W.E.)

Best Supporting Actress = Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Best Supporting Actor = Christopher Plummer (The Help)

Best Foreign Language Film = A Separation (Iran)

Best Animated Film = The Adventures of Tintin

Best Director = Martin Scorsese (Hugo)

Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical = Jean DuJardin (The Artist)

Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical = Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn)

Best Film – Comedy/Musical = The Artist