Golden Globes Predictions Contest

[Mister Tee]

Some noodling first, before predictions. Starting with a little geekery/history:

I first encountered the Golden Globes in 1964, when they were broadcast as part of The Andy Williams Show. I don’t think anyone back then took them as important Oscar predictors – they could hit on winners (as they did with Harrison and Andrews that year), but they were just as likely to pick someone who ended up not nominated (every supporting actor choice from 1965-67). The main thing I recall from that first exposure was that it was there, not at the subsequent Oscars, where Julie Andrews delivered her famous “I’d like to thank Jack Warner for making this whole thing possible” rebuke.

Over the next decade and a half, the Globes held roughly the same spot: they were a late January warm-up for the Oscars that sometimes gave an inkling of where AMPAS eventually went (they began the Cuckoo’s Nest rally in ’75, after the critics had full-on pushed for Nashville) but just as often missed the boat entirely, with choices like Anne of a Thousand Days, Love Story and The Exorcist.

Then, for a while, everybody fell in line. In 1979, the major critics’ groups (now up to three, LA having formed in 1975) all picked Hoffman, Field and Streep for acting honors – a degree of synchronicity we’d never seen before -- and the Globes followed right along (as did, ultimately, the Oscars). This began a five-year period (1979-83) where the critics, Globes and Oscars were more aligned than at any time before or since – we went into most of those Oscar nights with the acting and picture rosters set, first by the critics and then the Globes in agreement. It was the dullest Oscar stretch of my lifetime, including right now.

Critical divergence returned in 1984, and the Globes entered onto an interesting period. Between 1984 and 2002, they were utterly hit-and-miss in the acting categories – in 1985, they actually missed all four Oscar winners (plus director); in 1987, they hit all four (plus director); in other years, their synchronicity varied widely…typically nailing somewhere from 2-4 of the top six categories. However…they began predicting the Oscar best picture choice with greater frequency than any other precursor. In that 19-year period, only three of the Academy’s best picture choices failed to win a Globe first (keeping in mind that the Globe’s system gave them two shots at matching).

After 2002, that flipped around. In the years between then and now (yes, we’re talking about the recent past -- and thus possibly the future, which is why I’ve gone through this whole rigamarole), only 6 of the Globes’ choices have gone on to win best picture at the Oscars – a disgraceful .400 winning percentage. On the acting side, though, an entirely different picture. In the lead actor categories (where, again, the Globes have two shots at matching), over that 15-year period, exactly one person has won an Oscar without a Globe precursor: Sean Penn in Milk. In best actress, the win percentage is actually a bit better, as the only “miss” is not really a miss: Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road, who was replaced by Kate Winslet in The Reader. The supporting awards don’t line up quite as sharply – supporting actor has matched only 11 of those 15 tries (two of the misses came in the last three years), and supporting actress 10 (though one of the misses there was that 2008 asterisk: Winslet moving up to lead and making a match impossible). We think of SAG and the Broadcasters as suspense-ruiners in recent times, but the Globes are maybe even more guilty.

What I’m trying to say is, when it comes to the acting categories, you may not just be predicting a Globe. The odds say you’re setting up some hopefuls (and closing the door on others) for the entire season. Choose carefully.

With all that, my picks.

Hardest choices? Actress/drama – either Close or Gaga could launch a campaign, and McCarthy would also fit their history (think Jim Carrey). Director – Cuaron or Cooper or Spike Lee equally defensible choices. Film/musical or comedy – The Favourite, Vice or Green Book all tantalizing. Screenplay – almost any of them.

Picture (Drama): A Star Is Born
Picture (Comedy or Musical): Green Book
Best Actor (Drama): Bradley Cooper
Best Actress (Drama): Lady Gaga
Best Actor (Comedy or Musical): Christian Bale
Best Actress (Comedy or Musical): Olivia Colman
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Best Screenplay: The Favourite
Animated: Isle of Dogs
Foreign Language Film: Roma
Best Song: 'Shallow' from A Star is Born
Best Score: First Man

Standing o’s: 6

[Aceisgreat]

Picture (Drama): BlacKkKlansman
Picture (Comedy or Musical): The Favourite
Best Actor (Drama): Rami Malek
Best Actress (Drama): Glenn Close
Best Actor (Comedy or Musical): Christian Bale
Best Actress (Comedy or Musical): Olivia Colman
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King
Best Director: Spike Lee
Best Screenplay: The Favourite
Animated: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Foreign Language Film: Roma
Best Song: 'Shallow' from A Star is Born
Best Score: Mary Poppins Returns

Standing Ovations: 3

[Reza]

Picture (Drama): Black Panther
Picture (Comedy or Musical): Green Book
Best Actor (Drama): Rami Malek
Best Actress (Drama): Glenn Close
Best Actor (Comedy or Musical): Viggo Mortensen
Best Actress (Comedy or Musical): Olivia Colman
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Best Screenplay: The Favourite
Animated: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Foreign Language Film: Roma
Best Song: 'Shallow' from A Star is Born
Best Score: First Man

Standing Ovations: 5

[Jefforey Smith]

Picture (Drama): A Star Is Born
Picture (Comedy or Musical): Green Book
Best Actor (Drama): Rami Malek
Best Actress (Drama): Lady Gaga
Best Actor (Comedy or Musical): Christian Bale
Best Actress (Comedy or Musical): Emily Blunt
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Best Screenplay: The Favourite
Animated: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Foreign Language Film: Roma
Best Song: 'Shallow' from A Star is Born
Best Score: Marc Shaiman, Mary Poppins Returns

Standing Ovations: 6

[MaxWilder]

The trailer is about 90% music and 10% talking about music.

Of course! It's a drama about musicians, after all.

[Big Magilla]

A Star Is Born features 18 songs in full performance.

This is not true. It's about 130 minutes long without credits. The soundtrack album is about 59 minutes long without dialogue. That would mean 45% of the movie is concert or studio footage! Not all the songs are played in full. Ally's pop songs are mostly heard in snippets. There's certainly no complete performance of "Hair Body Face" or "Before I Cry."

It's still a musical, which is how it was sold. The trailer is about 90% music and 10% talking about music.

[MaxWilder]

A Star Is Born features 18 songs in full performance.

This is not true. It's about 130 minutes long without credits. The soundtrack album is about 59 minutes long without dialogue. That would mean 45% of the movie is concert or studio footage! Not all the songs are played in full. Ally's pop songs are mostly heard in snippets. There's certainly no complete performance of "Hair Body Face" or "Before I Cry."

[Big Magilla]

A Star Is Born features 18 songs in full performance. Bohemian Rhapsody has even more in partial and full performance albeit with its actors lip-synching. Mary Poppins Returns features 10 with 2 reprises. They are all musicals. Two are musical dramas, one is a musical comedy.

Any film in which a substantial portion of its screen time involves characters front and center singing and/or dancing is a musical. While there can be both musical dramas and musical comedies, if you have a separate category for musicals, that's where they belong. The categorization becomes muddled when you mix musicals with comedies. Once you decide, some forty years on, that dramatic musicals do not belong in that category, the proper thing to do is take the now redundant word "musical" out of the name of the category. Not having done so, the Golden Globes are in serious danger of looking sillier now than when they gave their Best Musical or Comedy Award to The Martian.

[MaxWilder]

So damn the HFP for not correctly listing either Bohemian Rhapsody or A Star is Born in their correct category!

Without citing previous GG categorizations, how are these musicals? You're saying there's no such thing as a drama about musicians.

You come perilously close to saying No history before today matters.

In this case I'll cross the line and say it.

How are these movies musicals? There are no musical numbers. They are dramas.

[HarryGoldfarb]

Picture (Drama): A Star Is Born
Picture (Comedy or Musical): The Favourite (MPR)
Animated: Incredibles 2
Foreign Language Film: Roma
Best Actor (Drama): Bradley Cooper
Best Actress (Drama): Lady Gaga
Best Actor (Comedy or Musical): Christian Bale
Best Actress (Comedy or Musical): Olivia Colman (Blunt)
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Lee)
Best Screenplay: The Favourite
Best Song: 'Shallow' A Star is Born
Best Score: Black Panther

Standing Ovations: 2

[Big Magilla]

This revisionist history has really gotten out of hand. The IMBd. is now pretending that that not only are the current crop of musicals not musicals, but neither are past musicals. It has revised The Sound of Music as Biography, Drama, My Fair Lady as Drama, Family, West Side Story as Crime, Drama and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as Comedy, Drama. However, if you go back a year before Seven Brides, you will see that The Band Wagon is a Comedy, Musical as are 1935's Top Hat and 1933's 42nd Street at least until they get caught up with all their changes.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
You come perilously close to saying No history before today matters.

I mean, it might not. Aquaman used to be a joke on Entourage and now it’s the number one movie in America going on three weeks in a row. You tell me.

[Mister Tee]

BEST DIRECTOR
Alfonso Cuaron has to win this one, right? It's just like in 2007 when Julian Schnabel beat The Coen Brothers. Unless of course it's just like 1983 when Barbra Streisand beat Ingmar Bergman.

Or what if it's like 2001 or 2002, when the Foreign Press jumped at the chance to finally give an award to a veteran director who'd never won before (Altman and Scorsese in those years), and they choose Spike Lee?

[Mister Tee]

So damn the HFP for not correctly listing either Bohemian Rhapsody or A Star is Born in their correct category!

Without citing previous GG categorizations, how are these musicals? You're saying there's no such thing as a drama about musicians.

You come perilously close to saying No history before today matters.

I mean, stipulate that the entire division between Drama and Comedy or Musical is an artificial one, one prone to dispute (many of us remember Jack Nicholson's bemusement at winning Best Actor/Drama for About Schmidt -- "We thought we'd made a comedy").

But the entire near-70 year history of the two-category Globes has decreed movies like A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody fall on the musical side...from With A Song in My Heart (1952) though Funny Girl (1968)/Funny Lady (1975), The Rose (1979), Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), What's Love Got to Do With It? (1993), Ray (2004) and Walk the Line (2005) -- and, oh yeah, including two previous versions of A Star is Born.

For that classification norm to suddenly be upended in a year that -- by wondrous coincidence! -- is hellaciously weak for dramas but still holds more residual prestige than its comedy or musical counterpart...that strikes a lot of us as a lot closer to rigging the system that righting historical wrongs.

[MaxWilder]

So damn the HFP for not correctly listing either Bohemian Rhapsody or A Star is Born in their correct category!

Without citing previous GG categorizations, how are these musicals? You're saying there's no such thing as a drama about musicians.