Awards Season officially kicked off with the 82nd Annual Golden Globe Awards, which took place this past Sunday night.
The Globes are widely considered a joke because the Hollywood Foreign Press has such a moronic reputation, and the awards have been given to some questionable winners in the past.
Because of past controversy, the HFP nearly disbanded a few years back, and the awards were almost completely canceled. But they made some huge alterations in the organization, and they are back now in all of their dumbass glory.
Julie and I had a watch party with some friends, and I hosted a live interactive chat on Patreon during the whole ceremony.
We had a blast, even though a local outage meant no Wi-Fi internet in Julie's apartment. We had to rig up a "hot spot" with a cell phone and watch the damn thing on a laptop during our -first-ever- LIVE chat on Patreon. FUN!. Oh yes, wonderful technology.
Anyway, let's get to my thoughts and some of the results.
Nikki Glaser, one of the funniest comedians working today, hosted for the first time and knocked it out of the park. Within two minutes, she completely erased any memory of Jo Koy and his disastrous hosting job last year. Her monologue was hilarious. It mixed insults (which she is known for) and political commentary with the usual jokes about showbiz, movies, and TV.
Most of her jokes hit their mark perfectly, even though some celebrities weren't pleased—especially the always pissed-off and hilarious Harrison Ford, whose bit as a presenter with Anthony Mackie was a riot.
My favorite part of Glaser's monologue was the bit where she imitated Adam Sandler saying Timothee Chalamet's name and then got Sandler to join in.
The telecast was loaded with the usual mixture of fun, boredom, obnoxiousness, and cliches that you expect from a stupid awards show, along with some technical gaffes.
Overall, there were some memorable moments.
I loved, loved, LOVED that Glaser gave a nice, much-deserved shout-out to the servers and bartenders on site and that craft services got more gratitude mentions in speeches than ever before (thanks to Colin Farrell starting that trend). Absolutely terrific!
Many of the presenters were quite good, but I most enjoyed Seth Rogen and Catherine O'Hara's X-rated Canadian interplay. It went far too long, but it was funny as hell, and as it went on and on, it just got more absurd, uncomfortable, and hilarious.
As far as the winners go, I predicted many of them, and there were only a few surprises, like Fernanda Torres's win for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for "I'm Still Here," which was easily the biggest shocker of the night.
The speeches ranged from completely idiotic (Jon Chu endlessly accepting the absurd and meaningless Box Office Award for "Wicked" is at the top of that list), to hilarious (Ali Wong), to sincere and charming (Colin Farrell), to much too long (pretty much every other speech of the night).
Most of the TV awards went to "Shogun" and "Hacks," as expected, with very few surprises on that side. On the movie side, awards went to Demi Moore for "The Substance," who gave an impassioned speech that was better than anything she did in that Goddamn movie.
In a huge and delightful surprise, the great and incredibly underrated Sebastian Stan won for his magnificent work in "A Different Man" and gave a terrific speech.
But "The Brutalist" took the big awards Sunday night, almost guaranteeing that it will be a frontrunner for some major prizes at the Oscars, which is not only disappointing but also kind of troubling.
It is a ridiculously over-praised piece of pretentious nonsense that starts out mediocre and slowly becomes unwatchable by the time it reaches its 2nd hour (when there are still another 105 endless minutes to go).
I was hoping that people would see through this movie's flimsy facade and acknowledge the sheer emptiness underneath, but nope. This thing is probably going to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
Even more disappointing is that Adrien Brody won the Best Actor Globe over Chalamet (who is so much better than Brody that it shouldn't even be a contest), which means Brody will probably take the big prize in March. Ridiculous.
But the most irritating speeches and moments of the night belonged to Brady Corbet, the once unbearably obnoxious actor and now unbearably obnoxious writer/director, who took the stage twice to accept undeserving awards for "The Brutalist."
His speeches were longwinded, annoying, pompous, and self-serving (precisely like his film). He rambled on and on about how he represents filmmakers who have been shafted, that he had to fight to make his film, that he bravely wants directors to have the final cut, etc., blah, blah, blah.
Corbet mentioned how he fought to shoot his film on 70mm and how he battled for the long running time and the intermission, making some attempt to prove what a hero he is when, in fact, he just came off as a loudmouth with an enormous ego who wants to be thanked for blessing us with his lousy movie.
It's the worst kind of egomaniacal pandering from an awards stage that you can imagine. It's further proof that just because some directors (like Corbet and similar blowhard Christopher Nolan) use the best equipment, shoot on film, and insist on movie theater experiences for their movies, does NOT automatically make them visionaries or good filmmakers because, guess what? They are not.
OK, rant over.
The show still went about 15 minutes over, even though it had no musical numbers, special tributes, or lifetime achievement award presentations. There wasn't even an "In Memoriam" segment to push the running time along. It just went long because of people like Corbet and Chu babbling on endlessly and a few wacky bits (none of them Glaser's) that went on too long.
This year's Golden Globes presentation was exactly what I expected: a dumb awards show with highlights, lowlights, and everything else in between.
We had fun watching it, making fun of it, and especially hosting the LIVE chat on Patreon. We will do this for every award show this season, leading up to the granddaddy of them all: The Academy Awards on March 2nd.
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