International Rules Movies; Emmy Winners in TV

There can be no doubt about it. The internationally-named Golden Globes can finally safely say they are indeed global.

The big takeaway from this morning’s nominations for the 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards is the presence of an unprecedented number of subtitled films in the marquee Best Motion Picture -Drama and Best Motion Picture -Comedy or Musical categories with five of the twelve nominees foreign language films: Iran’s It Was Just An Accident, Brazil’s The Secret Agent, and Norway’s Sentimental Value (with a WOW 8 nominations alone) are competing in Drama, while France’s Nouvelle Vague and South Korea’s No Other Choice are up for Comedy/Musical. Viewers of the broadcast on CBS this year better be able to read.

All of these are what are generally termed as arthouse movies, and a whopping four of them come from indie upstart NEON which led all studios and distributors with an overall 22 nominations, clear payoff from CEO Tom Quinn’s practice of going to the Cannes Film Festival and buying as many as he can. It was a very big Globes showing for Cannes because all the aforementions films but No Other Choice (which premiered in Venice) were main Cannes competition entries, the Drama nominees all major prize winners at Cannes as well. All of this international action, in these and other categories (even Animated Feature had three subtitled entries) can be attributed to the truly “international” makeover of the much maligned and scandal-ridden history of the former Hollywood Foreign Press Association which consisted of about 85 Hollywood-based members identifying as journalists who wrote for foreign publications, and many of them that I know actually do that, some didn’t.

After the whole enterprise was exposed in an LA Times article, the Globes were in serious trouble until new ownership, Penske Media Eldridge (a joint venture that includes Penske Media Corporation which is parent company of Deadline) bought Dick Clark Productions who have annually produced the Golden Globes broadcast, abolished the HFPA, absorbed many of their members and augmented with an estimated 300 or so new voters largely plucked from FIPRESCI, an international group of film critics and writers. The influence of this new voting bloc is unmistakable, genuine journalists from around the world who regularly attend major film festivals. It should be said the movies chosen are really good.

As one very prominent Hollywood studio awards strategist who has campaigned for Globes votes for decades texted me this morning, “well you add 350 int’l journalists you get a lot of foreign films I guess…same thing happened with AMPAS… if you want to be the European Film Awards go ahead but ratings will plummet”. We will see if this person is right about that, but the actual ratings on CBS were quite good last year and the network has a multi-year deal to air the Globes after NBC had dropped them. Another major player in the awards game who had a number of films nominated today also noted the heavy international influence and told me, “the era of Globes influence on the Oscars looks over”. That is to be determined since the Motion Picture Academy has also notably beefed up their global footprint in terms of recruiting members from around the world in recent years. Can this Globes list be a sign of things to come Oscar nomination morning?

It was only recently in terms of Globes history that a foreign language film nominated in Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language category could even be eligible to also compete in Drama or Comedy/Musical categories, now they dominate (four of the six nominees in the Non-English Language category are also up in the marquee categories).

As for the rest of the major nominees the biggest surprise to me was Wicked: For Good being left out of Comedy/Musical, a category that seems designed for that film, and for which Wicked was nominated last year.Now it is dominated by movies that are very hard to define as comedy or musical, with Bugonia, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, and Blue Moon joining the two aforementioned foreign entries. Blue Moon with a truly great Ethan Hawke (also nominated) is a terrific movie but this film is not a comedy, not a musical. It is about the break up of the songwriting team Rodgers & Hart and set at a Sardi’s opening night party of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma. Maybe voters got confused, but studios are the ones who enter the movies in the categories they want, usually ones where they suspect they will have the best chance. Labeling movies these days as strictly comedy or drama is an outdated concept considering the gray area of so many films now. It Was Just An Accident which Neon put in Drama, is largely a comedy with serious undertones. Wicked: For Good is unmistakably a musical, but it will have to settle for its acting and song nominations in addition to the “Cinematic And Box Office Achievement” category which is basically designed for movies that make money.

Regarding the latter one of the nominees, Avatar: Fire And Ash hasn’t made a dime yet since it doesn’t open until next week, but I guess voters are predicting it will be a box office hit. At any rate with this heavy arty lineup of movies this relatively new boxoffice category looks like an idea of genius by the show’s producers in order to guarantee at least some films viewers have heard of, much less seen. As for another new category, Best Podcast, I have nothing to say. Does that really belong on a show dedicated to movies and TV?

Even the star power the Globes have always been known for seems muted among this year’s nominees. Yes there are favorites like Julia Roberts (After The Hunt), Jennifer Lawrence (Die My Love), and Dwayne Johnson (Smashing Machine) in the lead Drama acting categories but they were all in movies that were box office bombs. Still they will be front and center you can bet where cameras can catch them along with other starry nominees in Comedy like George Clooney (nominated for Jay Kelly which also should have been a Best Picture Comedy nominee), Timothee Chalamet, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Rest assured “Hollywood’s Party Of The Year” will still have plenty of recognizable faces in the crowd on the movie side of the aisle, if not for movies a lot of people have seen. Maybe this will encourage them to check these films out.

Of course the Golden Globes is not just about the movies, but also gives out numerous statuettes for television, and unlike many of the artier nominees for film, viewers will instantly recognize the majority of TV contenders as they basically were all just at the Emmys in September. This is a bit of a switch for Globes which in their HFPA heyday championed, and often were the first, to nominate new shows, not so much anymore which could also be indicative of the more international membership not as familiar with the likes of acclaimed freshman shows like The Paper, The Lowdown, I Love LA, Landman, Task etc. A whopping eleven of the twelve nominees in Best Television Series Drama and Musical or Comedy categories were all in those related Emmy categories. The only newbie to break in was Vince Gilligan’s recently debuted Pluribus on Apple. Netflix‘s Adolescence leads the Limited Series category, as it did at the Emmys, but at least there was some fresh blood there with Prime Video’s The Girlfriend, Netflix’s The Beast In Me, and Peacock’s All Her Fault, so conversely this Globes recognition could help those shows solidify strong Emmy season campaigns. There is also very little variation from Emmys in the TV acting categories with only Glen Powell in Chad Powers, Rhea Seehorn in Pluribus (believe it or not on her first Globes nomination) , and Mark Ruffalo for the otherwise underrepresented Task breaking through from what Emmys have done in the past year or two. Jacob Elordi was one of just a few who broke through in both movies and tv with his supporting nomination for Frankenstein, and the little-known Australian TV film The Narrow Road To The Deep North.

When all is said and done about the Golden Globes lineup this year, they did solidify what we have been seeing this first week in December of awards giving and nominating. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which leads all Globe nominations with 9 (tying Cabaret and Barbie for third all time record at the Globes) and after wins at Gothams, NYFCC, National Board Of Review, and major recognition from AFI, as well as 14 nominations at Critics Choice it is your current front runner for Oscars, folks. The one to beat.

That’s certainly good news for Warner Bros. which had a very good day at the Globes with 18 nominations (including 7 for Sinners), as well as Netflix with 13 (including three films with Best Picture nominations). Add in TV totals for Netflix leading with 22 nominations to HBO Max’s 15, and you have a really good day for the prospective merger of Netflix/Warner Bros. continuing the collective rout they had with Critics Choice too.

Of course David Ellison tried to spoil the show announcing Paramount’s hostile takeover attempt on the WBD sale to Netflix just as we were getting Globes nominations announced. It is ironic since Ellison’s CBS and Paramount + are the network and streamer carrying the Golden Globes on January 11, and yet Paramount, CBS, and Paramount+ were dead last on the studio charts, managing only a paltry combined three nominations (one each between them and that included Par’s Mission: Impossible in the boxoffice category). Perhaps instead, David, you should be considering a hostile takeover of the Golden Globes voters instead of WBD shareholders. Just sayin’.