City of Films

Ten things you should know about Golden Globe nominees
by Andy Goldberg

Most people have more important things to do this time of year than ponder the significance of the Golden Globe nominations announced Thursday at the unheard of Hollywood hour of 5 am.  But in case you are a movie awards junkie or need some conversation topics for your holiday parties, here are ten vital facts you should know about the main nominees:

Slumdog Millionaire: A Mumbai-based tour de force t cultural, national and cinematic boundaries, this movie is the first India-based film about Indians ever to garner such high accolades and achieve breakthrough status in the US. Directed by Danny Boyle(Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), written by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) and starring Dev Patel as a brilliant pauper who wins an Indian game show, this movie could pull a few surprises this award season.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: How good can a movie about  a man who ages backwards really be? Plenty good if it stars Brad Pitt in one of his best roles, is based on a classic story by F Scott Fitzgerald and features quixotic director David Fincher (Zodiac, Fight Club). No wonder it’s one of the leading nominees this season with five Globe nominations.

Frost/Nixon: In these left-leaning times, what do you get when you put together one of Hollywood’s most admired directors and a searing takedown of notorious Republican president Richard Nixon? A handful of award nominations. Director Ron Howard has done a great job converting an award-winning play into a movie that exposes the manoeuvring that helped British interviewer David Frost reveal the real Richard Nixon in a series of interviews three years after Nixon left office.

Happy-Go-Lucky: Mike Leigh, the British director regarded as one of the best film-makers of our times, has done it again with this sensitive, amusing and poignant look into the life of a perpetually perky primary school teacher in north London. Nominated for best comedy and for best actress in a comedy for Sally Hawkins, this film’s presence at top award shows represents a deserved tribute to Leigh’s collaborative style of filmmaking in which he starts without a script and the actors improvise all their lines.

Mickey Rourke: This leading man of the 1980s is re-establishing himself as a Hollywood anti-hero with his role as a washed-up wrestler. The role has particular relevance to Rourke, 56, who quit acting in the 1990s to return to his first love – boxing.

Heath Ledger: One likes to think that Ledger would also be the certain favourite for the best supporting actor role even if he hadn’t died from an accidental drug overdose last year. Even before his death, Ledger had been earning acclaim for his role as the psychotic criminal, the Joker, in the brooding Batman movie, The Dark Knight. What’s surprising is that the box office hit didn’t yield any other nominations.

Clint Eastwood: The undisputed awards king of Hollywood, everything Eastwood does usually fills his many mantelpieces with trophies. Although he had two acclaimed movies in the running, and even acted in one of them, all he got was a best actress nomination for Angelina Jolie in Changeling and a nod for best score. Gran Torino, in which he played a grouchy old bigot, yielded nothing.

Meryl Streep: Usually the presence of Streep in a list of acting nominees means the other contenders needn’t bother preparing acceptance speeches. But despite being nominated in the drama section for Doubt and in the comedies for Mamma Mia, this might not be Streep’s year. Most critics feel the dramatic actress prize will go to Kate Winstlet in husband Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, while the comedy prize is Sally Hawkins.

Revolutionary Road: If a drama about the troubled world of some 1950s suburbanites fails to get you inspired, remember that former theatre director Sam Mendes blew away the competition with a similar setting in American Beauty. The film also features former Titanic teen couple Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in possibly the best roles of their lives.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association: The 90-member body that picks the awards is unrepresentative of the foreign media who  cover Hollywood. But the show, to be broadcast live in dozens of countries on January 11, still remains the second most prestigious prize in Hollywood after the Oscars.