State of the Race: The Golden Globes

Let’s paint a picture. It’s 2010, and you’re the Hollywood Foreign Press – you represent less than one hundred total critics throughout the globe and you’re throwing a party for movies and television in January. You’ve hosted a series of schmooze-fests where actors, directors and producers are laughing at all your jokes and taking the 2010-version of selfies with you. You feel pretty cool. Who should come to your party? You’re looking at the Comedy or Musical category you have at your party, and you’re thinking… how cool would it be if both Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie came?

To do so, you nominate The Tourist (a horrible 20% on Rotten Tomatoes), a globe-trotting non-comedy for Best Comedy or Musical, Depp for Best Comedic Actor, and Jolie for Best Comedic Actress. This is something you do, because your party is the Golden Globes and nothing matters.

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State of the Race: National Board of Review

What is the National Board of Review? Wikipedia tells us that this is an organization, starting in 1908, made up of critics, film enthusiasts, academics, and filmmakers in the New York Metropolitan area. Despite having “National” in name, the Board is rather regional and has only about 100 members cast ballots for nominees and winners in various categories. So… in terms of overlap to what the Academy does, it’s limited, and shows more correlation than causation. The main point, in terms of the Oscar race, is that the NBR is the first critical body to announce its annual awards. And it’s always fun to have news.

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State of the Race: Best Documentary Feature

An early glimpse of the Best Documentary Feature category has presented itself in the form of the Producer’s Guild of America nominations. While the rest of the PGA nominations aren’t announced until January 5th, the documentary nominations are released in November. They are:

Chasing Coral (Netflix)
City of Ghosts (Amazon Prime)
Cries from Syria (HBO)
Earth: One Amazing Day (in theaters)
Jane (in theaters)
Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower (Netflix)
The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee (HBO)

City of Ghosts – 2017 (image: imdb)

All these films are eligible, and on the “short” list (170 docs) for the Academy except The Newspaperman. Every other documentary should be happy for this bit of news. Ben Bradlee is being portrayed by Tom Hanks in The Post which is sure to clean up on nominations next year at the Oscars. If I’m picking a lock to be nominated out of this group it’s probably Jane. City of Ghosts and Cries from Syria seem like your usually Academy bait, but Jane just looks too good.

Happy watching! And be sure to check back in for more articles in our ongoing State of the Race series as awards season heats up.