Battle and Lotus Dominate GG Noms

One Battle After Another and HBO's The White Lotus earned the most Golden Globe nominations in film and TV categories respectively. Battle, which already been named Best Picture by the NY Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assoc. and the National Board of Review garnered 9 noms while Lotus picked up 6. The awards will be presented on Jan. 11 on CBS in a ceremony hosted by Nikki Glaser, repeating her stint from last year. In addition to the competitive categories, Helen Mirren will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement in film and Sarah Jessica Parker will be honored with the Carol Burnett Award for Lifetime Achievement in TV. These will be presented in a prime time special on Jan. 8 also on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus. The GGs are voted on by about 300 international journalists. It used to be a much smaller number and the awards were administered by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. In 2023, the HFPA was disbanded after numerous controversies and the assets were acquired by Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge Industries. Former HFPA members were allowed to resume their voting duties as salaried employees of the production companies. But in Feb. 2025, the practice of paying the previous HFPA members ended. (according to Wikipedia, they were being paid $75,000 a year!)

This year, the new category of Best Podcast has been added. (The only one I'm listening to now is Newcomers with Nicole Byer (Nailed It!) and Lauren Lapkus.)

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in Hamnet.
Lead or Supporting?

The GGs often act as a forecaster for the Oscars and Battle's strong showing indicates it as an Oscar front runner. However, Hamnet, Chloe Zhou's film based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell about young William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway, look likes its nearest competitor. Also, Hamnet is lot more emotional and involving while Battle is technically brilliant, but violent and cold IMHO. The GGs divide the major categories into Drama and Comedy or Musical, so Battle (Comedy) and Hamnet (Drama) could both be winners. And another thing, why is Paul Mescal who plays Shakespeare in the Supporting Actor category? Probably the Hamnet producers think he stands a better chance of winning there and yes, he has a few minutes less screen time than Jessie Buckley who plays Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway who is the focus of the story. But he's definitely the leading male of the film.

A complete list of GG nominees follow:

NYFCC Awards Flower Moon Best Picture; Etc.

Lily Gladstone won Best Actress from the NYFCC
for Killers of the Flower Moon.

Let the film award season begin. The New York Film Critics Circle is the first out of the gate with their picks for the best of 2023. Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese's three-hour-plus epic of the murders of Osage Native Americans by greedy white folks for their oil, was named Best Picture and Best Actress (Lily Gladstone as Mollie Kyle). But Best Director went to Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer which also won Best Cinematography. 

Golden Globe Noms and Vegas Crix

The last BIG pre-Oscar awards announcement came this morning from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Awards. Lincoln got the most nominations with seven. Daniel Day-Lewis is now the most popular candidate with five wins from critics' groups and three nominations. Django Unchained and Argo received five GG noms each. I discovered on FB that Django did not send out its screeners until the first week of December which may explain why it didn't do so well with the SAG noms yesterday. 

Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith continue to rake in the noms with Dame Judi garnering a Best Actress in a Comedy nom for Marigold Hotel and her co-star Dame Maggie gaining recognition for both Downton Abbey and Quartet.

I also added the Las Vegas Film Critics Society which bucked the trend of its fellow critics' group and award Best Picture to Life of Pi rather than Zero Dark Thirty. How many film critics are there in Las Vegas anyway? I also just realized that I completely missed the Independent Spirit Awards noms. I went looking for them on line and saw they were announced back on Nov. 28. They didn't get much press. I will add those later, right now I have two articles due today. 

Picture: Argo (AFI, cc, gg)
Amour (LAFCA)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (AFI, cc)
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (gg)
The Dark Knight Rises (AFI)
Django Unchained (AFI, cc, gg)
Les Miserables (AFI, cc, gg)
Life of Pi (AFI, cc, gg, LV)
Lincoln (AFI, cc, gg)
The Master (cc)
Moonrise Kingdom (AFI, cc, gg)
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (gg)
Silver Linings Playbook (AFI, cc, gg)
Zero Dark Thirty (AFI, Bos, cc, DC, gg, NBR, NYFCC, NYO) 

Actor: Jack Black, Bernie (gg)
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook (cc, gg, NBR, sag)
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln (Bos, cc, DC, gg, LV, NYFCC, NYO, sag)
Richard Gere, Arbitrage (gg)
John Hawkes, The Sessions (cc, gg, sag)
Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables (cc, gg, sag)
Ewan McGregor, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (gg)
Bill Murray, Hyde Park on Hudson (gg)
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master (cc, gg, LAFCA)
Denzel Washington, Flight (cc, gg, sag)

Actress: Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (gg) 
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty (cc, DC, gg, NBR, sag)
Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone (cc, gg, sag)
Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (gg)
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook (cc, gg, LAFCA-tie, LV, sag)
Emmanuelle Riva, Amour (Bos, cc, LAFCA-tie, NYO)
Helen Mirren, Hitchcock (gg, sag)
Maggie Smith, Quartet (gg)
Meryl Streep, Hope Springs (gg)
Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild (cc)
Naomi Watts, The Impossible (cc, gg, sag)
Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea (gg, NYFCC)

Supp. Actor: Alan Arkin, Argo (cc, gg, sag)
Javier Bardem, Skyfall (cc, sag)
Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook (cc, sag)
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained (gg, NBR)
Dwight Henry, Beasts of the Southern Wild (LAFCA)
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Master (cc, DC, gg, sag)
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln (cc, gg, LV, NYO, sag)
Matthew Maconaughey, Bernie and Magic Mike (cc, NYFCC)
Ezra Miller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Bos)
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained (gg)

Supp. Actress: Amy Adams, The Master (cc, gg, LAFCA)
Judi Dench, Skyfall (cc)
Ann Dowd, Compliance (cc, NBR)
Sally Field, Lincoln (Bos, cc, gg, NYFCC, sag)
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables (cc, DC, gg, LV, NY, sag)
Helen Hunt, The Sessions (cc, gg, sag)
Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy (gg, sag)
Maggie Smith, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (sag)

Director: Ben Affleck, Argo (cc, gg)
Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master (LAFCA)
Katheryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty (Bos, cc, DC, gg, NBR, NYFCC)
Tom Hooper, Les Miserables (cc)
Ang Lee, Life of Pi (cc, gg)
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook (cc)
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln (cc, gg)
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained (gg)

AFI=American Film Institute Bos=Boston Society of Film Critics; cc=Critics Choice Award nomination; DC=Washington DC Film Critics Association; gg=Golden Globe nomination; LAFCA=Los Angeles Film Critics Assoc.; LV=Las Vegas Film Critics Society; NBR=National Board of Review; NYFCC=New York Film Critics Circle; NYO=New York Film Critics Online; sag=SAG Award nomination