Golden touch: what the nominees
are hoping to get their hands on.
Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty
Spare a thought for the industrious organisers of the annual Golden Globe awards who announce their nominees and winners with such fanfare only to have the results reported as clues as to who's going to win what at the Oscars. How frustrating must that be? It's rather like a schoolboy gaining a fine crop of A-levels only for his parents to sagely nod their heads and conclude that his younger, better-looking sister should do very well in Maths and History next year.
Still, if you can't beat them, join them. This year's Globe nominations duly anointed Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain as the one to beat at next year's Academy Awards, while still conspiring to keep the likes of The Constant Gardener, Walk the Line and Good Night, and Good Luck doggedly in play. No surprise there: Brokeback Mountain has been talked of as a surefire award-winner ever since it picked up the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival a few months back. Few would begrudge it. Ang Lee's film is a worthwhile and well-acted beast, if perhaps a shade too stately and sedate for its own good. Best of all, it seems guaranteed to get up the noses of the Bush fraternity with its depiction of the American west as a seething hotbed of closeted gay love.
Elsewhere, however, the Globe nominations throw up some curious quirks. What, for instance, is Woody Allen's Match Point doing nominated in the best picture (drama) category as opposed to its parallel musical-or-comedy section? Is this a sly acknowledgment on the part of the Globe organisers that Allen officially isn't funny anymore? And what, for that matter, is The Producers doing nominated in any category whatsoever? I sat through this recently and am still uncurling my toes from the sheer hellish embarrassment of it all. And yet, whoops, here it is, with nods for best film and supporting actor for Will Ferrell, who is possibly the worst thing in it (although Uma Thurman's unintentionally heartbreaking impersonation of a knackered Swedish sex-doll runs him very close).
It should be pointed out that the Oscars are still some months away, and we have a whole myriad of awards (big and small) to soldier through before. But the ground has been laid and the contenders established. As of now it seems that next year's big prizes will be divided between the likes of Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, The Constant Gardener and Walk the Line. This strikes me as a solid enough list. But (the perennial question at this time of year) are these really the best films of the past 12 months?
