The 2024 Golden Globes resurrect the guillotine

Someone should resurrect the guillotine in France. In September the French committee that selected its representative for the Oscars covered itself in glory. He left aside the Palme d'Or Anatomy of a fall and opted for the clumsy To simmer. Even the Golden Globes, presented last night in another celebration of alcohol and sushi at the Beverly Hills Hotel, have highlighted the evidence of the error: Justine Triet's courtroom drama took home the awards for best foreign language film and best screenplay, the surprise of the night.

Almost at the same level as the award for best comedy, which he won poor creatures, by Yorgos Lanthimos, when it seemed sung for Barbie. Added to that award is the best actress in a comedy or musical, for its protagonist, Emma Stone, one of the bravest actresses today… who could be left without many more statuettes this season because she has Lily Gladstone in front of her, for The assassins of the moon.

Less of a surprise were the awards for best direction for Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer, although he had never won this trophy nor has he won the Oscar. By the way, the film is relaunched for the awards season with its five Globes, including best drama, although it was obvious that the room was pro-Barbie (they could only applaud the stone throw and felt that someone was guillotining the Mattel doll film). And the Oscar for best actor seems like a duel, tied at the Globes, between Paul Giamatti (winner in comedy with Those who stay) and Cillian Murphy (drama winner for Oppenheimer).

Da'Vine Joy Randolph, as the college cook in Those who stay, won the Globe for best supporting film. She is the fourth performer in the high school category to win awards from the four major American critics associations (NBR, LAFCA, NYFCC and NSFC). She is a sure bet for Hollywood's main trophies. Because, are these awards going to mark the Oscar nominations? These votes take place from the 11th to the 16th, before their announcement on the 23rd. So there will be some who change their decision, but the last decade has already made it clear to us that to know who wins the sacrosanct statuette we have to wait for the awards of the different guilds. It seems more complicated about Robert Downey junior, who won the secondary school award for Oppenheimer, when in his way is Ryan Gosling with Barbie.

Because the Golden Globes are more of a television show — hence the presenters looked at the camera and left the stalls behind them as a backdrop, there is no technical category, and the series are awarded: how many more famous at dinner, the better—than a report on the state of audiovisuals. And the x-ray is manipulated. Both the Golden Globes and the magazines Variety and The Hollywood Reporter They belong to the same company, Eldridge Industries. Everything stays at home, right? When Los Angeles Times He started the war against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the HFPA, his missiles were not so much against its planning as a closed preserve, which it was, but rather the newspaper was struggling to get more access to movie stars. And really, did he achieve it?

A few days ago, Matt Belloni, former editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter before founding the digital medium puck and also become in the person responsible for The Town, the most influential podcast about cinema and majors, wrote about who had really won in this battle: a group of publicists. With their complaints they achieved that today the old HFPA is dismantled. Complaints, obviously, interested. Two and a half years later we have the Golden Globes with a much larger number of journalists (spread all over the world, as confirmed by awards such as best screenplay or animated film for The boy and the heron, by Miyazaki, first for a non-English film), with more defensible decisions from an artistic point of view, but controlled as if it were a monopoly by those publicists and the two most powerful traditional magazines. Which incidentally have been broadcast on CBS after an NFL game: a show for the whole family (hopefully those families have decided to watch the monologue later Armageddon by Ricky Gervais, winner of the new category of stand-up comedy television, on Netflix).

And yes, Hollywood corrupts. The Golden Globes were rotten; Now it is Critics Choice members who accept gifts and cash payments for moderating event presentation roundtables. Of course, access to filmmakers and performers is more complicated every year, with shorter times for interviews, as if we were returning to the golden years of the industry, when every journalistic article went through the publicists' department. Recalling the great work of gossip and the murky affairs of the basements of cinema written by Kenneth Anger, this is less and less Hollywood and more Babylon.

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