The Golden Globes 2011 Plus a Celebrity Connection

To all the people who spend weeks and/or months writing about awards shows in advance, making predictions, guessing who will what to whom and when and live blogging and all that jazz, well I am not for you, or you are not for me, or however Shakespeare put it. In other words, it's kind of a waste of time. Of course awards shows are fun to watch and talk about for about five minutes after the fact, but other than that, who cares?Like year end lists, awards don't represent what the Best Movie of the year is, how could it, there is, to quote William Goldman, no such thing; simply the reflection of which movie a group of people decided they liked more than the others. But regardless, while I should really be finishing that Rabbit Hole review or working at becoming a better critic, here's my 2 cents on what happened last night:

• Jason Segel, my favourite comedic leading man, got the biggest laugh of the red carpet when he did a rendition of Meat Loaf's I Would do Anything for Love. When a Jim Steinman musical finally happens, if ever, I vote Segel in the lead.
• Some have praised Ricky Gervais for mocking a ridiculous institution to it's face but I don't know, his routine throughout the night felt more like simply an amplification of last year. He tried to be quicker and more offensive while forgetting to be clever or laugh-out-loud hilarious and most of his targets were easy ones. The Charlie Sheen joke was Letterman grade stuff, suggesting the Hollywood Foreign Press take bribes was funny when he did it last year and really, Robert Downey Jr. rehab jokes jumped the shark when Downey announced the best special effects category at the Oscars a couple years ago. My vote for next year: Joan Rivers.
• Speaking of Downey he stole the show, as expected, with a line to Gervais, ""Aside from the fact that it's been hugely mean-spirited, with mildly sinister undertones, I'd say the vibe of the show is pretty good so far, wouldn't you?" And then went on with an introduction that started off funny and dragged on longer than it should have. 
• The only movie that deserved recognition, The Kids Are All Right won for best Picture - Comedy. Really, was The Tourist, Red or Burlesque better than Morning Glory, Hot Tub Time Machine or Easy A? 
• Clair Danes won for her performance in Temple Grandin and it was sweet to see the real Temple Grandin sitting there with her and yet all I could think of how William Goldman said he will never vote for "alcoholics or retards" because they are the easiest roles to play.
• Christian Bale showed up as Charles Manson doing Jesus and yet, outside of saying "shit" on network TV said something profound when he thanked Mark Whalberg for giving a quiet performance, the ones that no one ever recognizes, for him to give a loud one. There's something to be pondered here about the nature of acting and whether or not "award" type of performances are really great acting or not. I guess that explains why Colin Firth took it over Jesse Eisenberg.
• David Fincher looked miserable, just adding to his reputation as being an impossible man to work with. Seeing him win reminded me of one of my favourite Fincher stores as told by Sharon Waxman in Rebels on the Backlot. When one of the Fight Club producers heard Helena Bonham Carter's line to Edward Norton "I want to have your abortion," she begged and begged Fincher to change it. Finally he agreed on the condition that he got to change it to whatever he wanted and it would have to stay. Fine she agreed, nothing could be worse. Until she heard the new line: "Best f**ck I've had since kindergarten," and she begged him to put the other one back. 
• Al Pacino, you've won so many awards, why, all these years later, can you not compose a coherent acceptance speech?
• David O. Russell didn't headbutt anybody. Guess it's good George Clooney wasn't on site.
• Good for you Diane Warren, it's a great song even if the movie is suppose to be crap.
• Trent Reznor won a Golden Globe. Both of us have apparently grown a lot since The Downward Spiral.
• Dear Lea Michele: you are not attractive, you cannot act and your voice just sounds like a poor man's Vanessa Hudgens. Make of that what you will. 
• Inception didn't win anything. Good. It won't win Oscars either. It doesn't deserve them and it makes me sad to think that movies like True Grit or Rabbit Hole didn't get a nominations so that this one could. 
• Robert De Niro's speech was a better indictment of the HFPA than anything Gervais did and his quip to Matt Damon, "I loved you in The Fighter" was hilarious. Usually de Niro is so stern. Good for him. 
• All that said, Helena Bonham Carter made me think of Hitchcock's Vertigo in which Jimmy Stewart tries to transform a woman into a a former dead love:

Could Hena Bonham Carter actually be Edward Scissorhands in Disguise? You Decide

Golden Globes 2010

So I just finished watching the Golden Globes. It was the first time I've ever watched the entire show because, quite frankly, I don't care much about television and the Golden Globes always seemed to me to be the poor man's Oscars. They aren't as funny, as shamelessly glamours, and their comedy categories (which sometimes do good work by honouring worthy films that otherwise wouldn't garner serious awards consideration as was the case this year with The Hangover) give a certain credibility to films that would otherwise be thrown on the scrap heap to be forgotten about as history moves on without them. I'm talking about stuff like The Proposal, It's Complicated, Sherlock Holmes, Julie and Julia, and Nine.

I'm not going to talk about the winners and whether or not they were truly the best in their category (okay I'll do it once: 500 Days of Summer was clearly a better film than The Hangover, and really, Robert Downey Jr.? But no hard feelings) because, unlike other years, I haven't seen all the nominees and therefore don't have the adequate information to pass informed judgements.

What I want to do is make an observation. The other day I was reading Matt Singer's brief review of An Education over at Termite Art and he made the comment that TV is getting so good that it is beginning to overshadow the cinema. This comes as absolute horror to me as someone who has lived and breathed cinema and kept TV at even greater than an arms length away.

But as I was watching the Golden Globes and seeing all the TV nominees for shows I've never seen like Big Love, Dexter, True Blood, Glee, and so on, I realized that Singer was maybe on to something, especially when compared to those above listed nominated films like Julie and Julia and It's Complicated.

Then I got to thinking back over what were the most popular films of 2009: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, New Moon, Night at the Museum 2, Terminator: Salvation, and the absolute stinkiest of them all, Transformers: Rise of the Fallen. It was a depressing realization: Hollywood really was in the crapper this year. It's 2009 and instead of producing our own contemporary classics the best we can do is honour a hack musical remake of one of Fellini's most invaluable masterpieces?

Then Martin Scrosese took the stage to accept the Cecil B. Demille Award and things got worse for me. Sitting through a montage of one of America's most value directors to ever stand behind a camera's work, I was left thinking: There were more essential, classic, absolutely unforgettable moments in those few minutes of montage then there have been in all of 2009. I considered myself definitely depressed.

And then, with the TV awards behind and the major awards just over the horizon, I was reminded that, even if 2009 looked and felt like a total wash, amid all the meaningless wreckage, were films made out of the very stuff that make us fall in love again and again with the cinema every day of our lives. Film's like Inglourious Basterds, 500 Days of Summer, Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker and Avatar.

Then Jeff Bridges, one of America's true acting treasures, won best actor for Crazy Heart (a film I haven't seen but am planning on and hope you are too) and was given a standing ovation. "Yes," I thought, "these moments are the reason why we film lovers stick it out even through the worst of years." It was a reminder of what is still, after over 100 years of history, the most unchanged fundamental necessities of film: good actors, playing strong characters, immersed in good stories.

Then, as Avatar began winning all the big awards, I was indeed satisfied in my realization that the most popular film of the year was also the best. It wasn't the one about mutant super heroes, vampire lovers, living museum displays, intergalactic robots or any other such gimmick. It wasn't based on a theme part ride, a video game or a toy chain. It wasn't a sequel, a remake, a reboot, or any other such quick money making scheme. It was a bold, beautiful, original piece of art and a glorious entertainment to boot. And it is a film that I hope Hollywood has learned a valuable lesson from: that people essentially crave and are drawn to new concepts and new ideas that are presented in classical film conventions (stories told with pictures). In 20, 10, even 5 years Twilight and Transformers will simply be the bad aftertaste of an era in filmmaking in which big studios thought they could get away with phoning it in.

At the end of the day, there will never be a shortage of kids who buy into fads and trends because it is the "it" thing to do at the time, and even more people like my girlfriend's friend (who I alluded to not so lovely the other day) who have no concept of transgression or originality or passion or emotion or even intelligence and whose narrow tastes, day in and day out, are making it harder and harder for me and people like me to see the films that matter the most to us.

Regardless, in spite of everything, I must hold my head up high and look forward to tomorrow because, no matter how bleak it may look right now, as history has proven and as Brandon Lee so truthfully said in The Crow: "It can't rain all the time."

A complete list of Golden Globe winners can be found here, and probably just about everywhere else too.