The (Golden) Globalization of the Academy Awards

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This article was published 25/02/2012 (5351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It used to be a laughing matter when it was suggested the idiotic Golden Globe Awards — conferred by the mysterious hacks of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — were somehow a predictor of the somewhat more prestigious Academy Awards.

These days, it doesn’t seem so outlandish a notion after all. The crop of nominations for the best of 2011 recalls the Globe’s incessant courtship of the popular kids — it reached a kind of nadir at the 2011 Globes with the nominations of both Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie for acting nominations for looking good in the flop adventure-romance The Tourist.

So as we predict the likely winners and should-have-wons in the 2012 Oscar race, we’re also going to throw in the Globe Factor, showing where the Oscars nominated the popular kids over artists who really deserved a nomination.

 

BEST PICTURE

The Nominees:

The Artist; The Descendants; Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; The Help; Hugo; Midnight in Paris; Moneyball; The Tree of Life; War Horse.

Will Win:

All indicators (The Directors Guild, The Producer’s Guild, and yes, the Globes) suggest The Artist will take home the gold Sunday night, largely on the audacity of a silent black and white movie entering the marketplace in the 21st century. It’s a perfectly lovely little movie, but coming from the land of Guy Maddin, I am unimpressed by the audacity factor.

Should win:

Of all the nominees, the 3-D fantasy Hugo is not only the better film, it’s the more heartfelt paean to the era of silent film, as personified by the character of Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley).

The Globe Factor:

The nominations include ingratiating fare such as The Help, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and War Horse at the expense of better, more difficult films, including Melancholia, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and even Young Adult.

BEST DIRECTOR

The nominees:

Michel Hazanavicius; Alexander Payne; Martin Scorsese; Woody Allen; Terrence Malick

Will win:

Again, indicators are that Hazanavicius will take the prize for The Artist. (See above).

Should win:

Scorsese, routinely passed over by Oscar, did the best work of the bunch. Instead of merely paying homage to the films of the past (which he does), he also expanded the medium with his ingenious use of 3-D technology.

The Globe Factor:

Lars von Trier rendered himself persona non grata at the Oscars with his penchant for stupid off-the-cuff remarks. That doesn’t mean his work on Melancholia was any less stunning.

 

BEST ACTOR

The nominees:

Demian Bichir, George Clooney, Jean Dujardin, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt

Will win:

It’s between Clooney for The Descendants and Dujardin for The Artist, with Dujardin emerging on the strength of that literally winning smile.

Should win:

Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a masterful performance considering his spymaster character George Smiley is a man obliged to keep his thoughts and feelings relentlessly guarded.

The Globe Factor:

When the Academy chooses to nominate Brad Pitt (not for Tree of Life, mind you, but for Moneyball) over the great Michael Shannon of Take Shelter, you almost expect Ricky Gervais to pop up and mock the whole process.

 

BEST ACTRESS

Nominees:

Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Rooney Mara, Meryl Streep, Michelle Williams

Will win:

Viola Davis’s sad potent performance actually lent credibility to the liberal fantasy script of The Help. She’ll win the award, not just for her performance, but for helping legitimize the movie itself.

Should win:

Meryl Streep just takes acting to a new level of excellence and actually, she too helped legitimize a movie — The Iron Lady — that didn’t necessarily deserve it.

The Globe Factor:

Close wasn’t really a convincing man in Albert Nobbs. But Charlize Theron was definitely a credible bitch in Young Adult. Call this the triumph of the well-intentioned.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Nominees:

Kenneth Branagh, Jonah Hill, Nick Nolte, Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow

Will win:

Plummer will get overdue acknowledgement for a man who comes out of the closet in his 70s in Beginners.

Should win:

I don’t have a problem with that.

The Globe Factor:

I simply don’t get Hill’s nomination. It’s good work, but hardly great. Lots of people were upset at Albert Brooks’ shunning for his out-of-character hoodlum in Drive, but I’d add acerbic comic Patton Oswalt’s emotional turn in Young Adult and definitely Andy Serkis’s motion-capture Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes as more worthy, if less obvious choices.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nominees:

Berenice Bejo, Jessica Chastain, Melissa McCarthy, Janet McTeer, Octavia Spencer

Will win:

Precedents indicate Spencer will take the award for her work as Minny, the maid with an evil trick up her starched sleeve in The Help.

Should win:

You have to give props to Melissa McCarthy’s utter fearlessness in Bridesmaids in a genre rarely acknowledged by the Academy.

The Globe Factor:

The well-intentioned, politically correct will triumph over the outrageous.

 

The Academy Awards will be broadcast Sunday on CTV at 7:30 p.m.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca