The Golden Globes: Liveblogged (ish)

In the absence of a wireless connection tonight, I'm not actually able to watch TV and play on the internets at the same time. So instead, I'm going to run back and forth during the commercials, updating this post each time. (And burning calories, too!)

Let's call it liveblogging-esque. Hey, it's not like the good people at the Golden Globes advertising sales department aren't going to hook me up with plenty of opportunities.

Quick, quick, before the show starts, my chick flicks-related predictions are:

• Slumdog Millionaire (our honorary chick flick) will nab Best Drama
  
• In Bruges will take down Mamma Mia! and Vicky Cristina... for Best Comedy/Musical
• Emma Thompson will win Best Actress in Comedy/Musical for Last Chance Harvey

Okay, let the show begin!

8:07 pm: I may not make it through the night. One award in, and Kate Winslet already made me cry.

8:10 pm: Bruce Springsteen wins Best Original Song, makes a joke about how good it felt to be in competition with Clint Eastwood for something, and win. Dirty Harry looks unamused - or does his face just look that way all the time...?

8:21 pm: First (albeit slightly veiled) Bush/Obama reference goes to Laura Dern, after her acting win for Recount. First awkward attempt at humour goes to presenters Simon Baker and Eva Longoria.

8:35 pm: Okay, so Don Cheadle's bit about how the Coen brothers have never hired him - while introducing Burn After Reading's best picture clip - was worth a laugh. But otherwise, this show is distinctly lacking in funny. Isn't this supposed to be the one where all the stars get drunk and say hilarious things?

8:41 pm: Hey, speaking of funny, Ricky Gervais just saved the day! Also, I enjoyed the awkward silence that greeted the Jonas Brothers. (Was that an unspoken "Who...?" echoing around the room?)

8:45 pm: I struck out on Best Actress - Comedy. Sally Hawkins took it. But she made me cry again, and she and Emma Thompson seem to be pals, so I guess that's okay!

9:01 pm: Heath Ledger wins it, posthumously of course, for Best Supporting Actor. It's a moment that's been so anticipated (well, I guess it's really the Oscar people are holding their breath on) that it could easily have felt overplayed, but it was handled tastefully. A quick clip, and a few thoughtful words from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan. Nothing so awful as cutting to a shot of Michelle Williams (if she's even there), thank God.

9:08 pm: Two thoughts: 1) Colin Farrell still does it for me, even with the moustache. 2) His "I have a cold [sniff, sniff], it's not the other thing it used to be" is one of the lines of the night so far. Handsome AND funny, folks!

9:24 pm: Wow, Seth Rogen's "doing coke with Mickey Rourke in the 80s" line fell flat. Seth, see Colin's coke joke, above. Some work, some don't.

Also, Slumdog just won for Best Screenplay! Dev Patel and Freida Pinto looked adorably excited. Nobody laughed at Alec Baldwin's line about bringing Rumer Willis a juice box, after his Best Actor in a Comedy win, but I dug it.

9:41 pm: If John Adams continues winning everything, all the time, I might have to look it up. Although the U.S. founding fathers aren't usually my bag.

9:48 pm: And the Year of Tina continues. Is it possible Time mis-stepped naming Barack Obama its person of the year, and should have given the nod to Tina Fey instead?

10:24 pm: Hurray for Colin Farrell!! I love a heartfelt, off-the-cuff speech. Well done.

Also, Slumdog has added Best Director and Best Score since I last checked in. Cue more shots of the young cast jumping for joy. Is this a one-off, or is Hollywood about to discover the cinematic potential of India in some larger, more meaningful way?

10:33 pm: Strike two. Vicky Cristina took the award for Best Comedy.

10:55 pm: Mickey Rourke = speech of the night, and not only for the expletives. Fingers crossed that Slumdog will complete its sweep and land Best Picture...

11:07 pm: Yes! Slumdog Millionaire wins Best Picture... The only thing left to do now is to lament that no one streams a live feed of the after parties!

To quote Tom Cruise: Good night, folks!

Whole Lotta Nominating Goin' On!

Whew! While I've been otherwise occupied, a veritable slew of awards and award nominations have been handed out.

Here's the chick flick cheat sheet:

Golden Raspberries

The Razzies are normally our chance to shine, but remarkably enough, we're under-represented this year. (A banner year for chick flicks, or an especially bad year for man movies? Tough to say.)

In the "Worst Picture" category, only High School Musical 3, The Hottie and the Nottie, and The Love Guru come close to qualifying. And really - do we have to associated with any of them? I hopes not.

Into purer chick flick territory: Dane Cook and Kate Hudson both took worst acting nominations for My Best Friend's Girl, while Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz represented for What Happens in Vegas. All of the above also landed "Worst Couple" nominations, as did Kate Hudson (again) and Matthew McConaughey, for Fool's Gold, and "any couple in Mamma Mia" for, well, Mamma Mia.

The Women scored a nod for Worst Sequel, Prequel, Remake or Rip-Off, and "the cast of The Women" was also nominated for Worst Actress. Ouch.

Here's hoping Sylvester Stallone takes home most of the actual statuettes this year!

Writers Guild of America

The good folks at the Writers Guild have nominated Vicky Cristina Barcelona for Best Original Screenplay. They also gave Slumdog Millionaire the nod for Best Adapted Screenplay -- and speaking of which, can we adopt Slumdog into the chick flick fold?

It's a love story. There's a dance number at the end. It's also fabulous. I say we claim it!

Directors Guild of America

Again, our adoptive chick flick Slumdog gets a nomination, for Danny Boyle's direction. Hurray for flexible definitions of film sub-genres!

People's Choice Awards

Over at the awards show that proves (to many film critics) the inadequcies of democracy, there's plenty of chick flick action. (Surprised?) 27 Dresses beat out Mamma Mia! for Favorite Comedy, Mamma Mia! and Sex and the City lost out (to The Dark Knight, definitely not a chick flick) on Favorite Cast, Baby Mama's Tina Fey and Amy Poehler got denied for Favorite On-Screen Match-Up, and chick flick maestro (maestra?) Kate Hudson was named Favorite Leading Lady.

Critics Choice Awards

Finally, the antithesis of the People's Choice: the Critics Choice. Once again, I'm leaning on Slumdog, here, and it racks 'em up. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Composer, Best Writer, and Best Actor! Also, Anne Hathaway tied with Meryl Streep (for Doubt, not Mamma Mia, silly) for her performance in Rachel Getting Married.

More soon! The Golden Globes get under way in just over 40 minutes!

Golden Globes: And the Nominees Are...

Ahhh, awards season: my favourite extended guessing game of the year. Let the fun begin!

First up? The Golden Globes nominations are in, and there's plenty of lovey-dovey, chick flick-esque stuff to discuss.

Of course, the Globes are always a better option than Oscar for chick flick lovers, thanks to the division between comedies (and musicals) and dramas, which lets some worthy fun-loving material sneak in alongside all the oh-so-serious heavy-hitters.

But this year, even the drama category has some romance to it -- in stark contrast to, say, last year's roster of man-heavy, bloody flicks.

In Best Picture - Drama, The Reader, Revolutionary Road and Slumdog Millionaire all got the nod; between them, the trio also landed 3 acting nominations, 3 shots at Best Director, and a couple of screenplay nominations.

Meanwhile, in Best Picture - Musical or Comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky, Mamma Mia! and Vicky Cristina Barcelona are all vying for the top prize. Between them, they've also got 5 acting nominations.

And there's more beyond the Best Picture nods: Anne Hatheway's nominated (for Rachel Getting Married) as Best Actress in a Drama, as is Kristin Scott-Thomas (for I've Loved You So Long - also a Best Foreign Language Film nominee). Classifying Doubt and Changeling as chick flicks might be a stretch, but if you want to count them, Meryl Streep (surprise!) and Angelina Jolie round out the nominees.

Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson both took Best Actor/Actress in a Comedy or Musical nominations for Last Chance Harvey, and Ralph Fiennes landed a Best Supporting Actor nod for The Duchess.

Quite the field, by chick flick standards! And yes, I realize I've used "chick flick" pretty broadly here -- but considering the dearth of romantic or even remotely "feminine" plots we've seen at awards shows in the past few years (see: There Will Be Blood, both Cronenberg/Mortensen flicks, No Country For Old Men, Half Nelson, etc, etc) I think that's fair.

So, I have to confess: I have yet to see any of these. (I know, not even Mamma Mia!) I plan on remedying that asap, but in the meantime, here are some uninformed predictions:

Slumdog Millionaire is getting an awful lot of the buzz so far, so don't be surprised to see it go big. As far as guaranteed also-rans, I'd say it's highly unlikely that Mamma Mia! will win in its Best Picture category.

Meryl Streep should never be counted out, but this year she's got two nominations for Best Actress, one in each category. Kate Winslet's also got a pair, in Best Actress and Best Supporting, so keep an eye on both of them. In fact, the whole Actress field is much, much deeper than usual, this year!

That's something to celebrate -- but, taken in conjunction with the greater range of "romantic" storylines up for awards this year, it begs the question: Is Hollywood incapable of creating serious, meaty, well-written roles for women outside of the chick flick rubric? Why don't any of those bleak, bloody movies we were discussing earlier feature any strong, hard-ass women?

Hmm. More to come, as Awards Season 08-09 gets under way!

Did 'Sex and the City' Get "Snubbed" by the Golden Globes?

Uh, in a word? No.

The Hollywood Reporter seems to be confused. In a roundup of GG snubs, Gregg Kilday writes:

Perhaps most puzzling of all: The movie version of "Sex" failed to register in the comedy categories.

During the run of the TV series, the Globe voters lavished their attention on star Sarah Jessica Parker (seven nominations, four wins) and the show (six nominations, three wins). But the movie? Nada.

Must have been a case of been there, done that.

Puzzling? Not at all.

To quote the Magic 8 Ball, the answer is obvious: The HFPA rewarded the show because it was good, and ignored the movie because it was baaaad.

More on the Golden Globes nominations, and awards season more generally, coming soon!

The 60th Primetime Emmys... In Real Time

Before we head into the real awards season, I figured I ought to work on my live-blogging skills. Consider this an experiment. Here goes!

8:02pm - Am I the only one who caught Susan Sarandon rolling her eyes when Oprah was introduced?

8:14pm - I had forgotten that the five nominees for "Best Reality TV Show Host" would be co-hosting the show. I wish the Emmys had forgotten, too. Was their intro designed to prove that they don't, in fact, belong at the big show?

8:22pm - You know it's bad when the winners are coming up with the best jokes of the night. Thank you, Jeremy Piven. The television writers aren't still on strike, are they?

8:39pm - Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell just made this show worth watching. Give them both awards - for Most Awkward Man In History, and Best Poker Face On Prime Time.

8:58pm - Nice to see the Colbert Report's writers get their due. (Also nice to see Conan O'Brien's Heigl bit!) Is it me, or is the writer crowd getting an unusual level of attention in this year's show? Post-strike fall-out, I guess.

9:00pm - I wonder what Steve Martin thinks of Howie Mandel and Ryan Seacrest. It must be tough to craft a show that has room for the likes of both. Steve Martin, in my mind, stands for everything that's right about TV - Jeff Probst, on the other hand...

9:04pm - Two questions spring to mind: First, are Heidi Klum's constant outfit changes designed to mask her inability to read a teleprompter? And second, has Josh Groban secretly been voicing Cartman all these years?

9:08pm - First "community organizer" line of the night goes to... Laura Linney!

9:27pm - Television is so lucky that they have someone like Tina Fey on their side: talented, articulate, and a bona fide hottie to boot. But is it just me, or are the Emmys turning somewhat Oscar-like in terms of honouring shows that hardly anyone watches?

9:40pm - That was probably the least boring message from an Academy president that I've ever witnessed. That's not saying much, though.

9:49pm - Stephen Colbert just induced my first real guffaw of the night, with his "dried up old prune" bit. "You can never have too much... What could possibly go wrong?"

In other news... 9 minutes since the last commercial break? Weak.

9:54pm - Sandra Oh had a favourite line for the night: "My parents are here with me tonight, and they could not be prouder... Unless I actually was a doctor."

10:01pm - Don Rickles should henceforth host all award shows and present all awards. The man made my night - and I'm pretty sure most of the audience felt the same way!

Also - did anyone else notice that NO ONE clapped for the Amazing Race when they won Best Reality TV Series? I guess it's a room full of writers and actors - neither of whom reality tv bothers to employ..

10:03pm - Whoever was in charge of the teasers before each commercial break is under the mistaken impression that we care about the winner of the reality TV awards. Memo To Whomever It May Concern: We don't.

10:33pm - Yup, it's a regular writer love-fest at the Emmys tonight. Alec Baldwin called Tina Fey "the Elaine May of her generation" - I'm going to have to google that.

In the meantime, all the writer love is re-kindling my occasional fantasies of somehow writing something, someday, that qualifies for nomination at a fancy televised red-carpet event, wearing a designer gown, and giving a Hollywood hottie a kiss on the cheek before gracefully accepting my award...

10:36pm - Elaine May

10:46pm - Ahhh... Now I understand! They included an award for Best Reality TV Host so they could trot out Jimmy Kimmel to mock the nominees. Almost makes it worth it. Almost.

10:59pm - That's all, folks!

Awards Season Pt. 4: Belated Post-Oscar Fall-out

Joke of the night goes to Jon Stewart for the line about the Vanity Fair Oscar party being canceled in solidarity with the writers. (It goes something like this: If you really want to help the writers out, you might want to try inviting some of them to the Vanity Fair Oscar party... Zing!)

Katrina Onstad has witty and vitriolic play-by-play here. Slate's post-op is here. (The line about Diablo Cody looking like a grown-up Pebbles Flintstone nearly made me spit out my iced mocha latte...) The chick flicks generally got stomped (though Diablo stepped it up in the original screenplay category) but hey, awards aren't really our thing, are they. Unless we're talking Teen Choice Awards, and then we own that shit.

It's going to be chick flicks lite this month around here, since I'm on the road and I'm not sure how many bad two-year-old rom-coms I'll be able to find on my motel pay-per-view. I'm hoping to find a theater to see Step Up 2: The Streets (it's a pun, get it?), but we'll see how it goes...

Awards Season Pt. 3: Red Carpets and Not-So-Bated Breath

Well, the show starts in two hours, and the endless pre-game shows are well under way. I've got Ben Mulroney and Co. on mute for the time being... If you're also less-than-engrossed in the Red Carpet interviews and the Hot vs Not commentary, here's some final pre-Oscar Night reading material: two email roundtables (those darn things are so popular these days) from Slate and The Globe and Mail. Witticisms and vitriol abound...

Awards Season Pt. 2: The Show Must Go On!

Well, it's official. Now that the Hollywood writers strike has ended, the 80th Academy Awards will be going ahead next weekend as scheduled! (Sigh of relief.)

I know, I know, they would have given out the awards anyway. But that's not really the point of the Oscars, now is it?

And now, the nominees...

The big movies seem even more male-dominated than usual this year (not even a good dysfunctional family drama a la American Beauty!) - it's all about There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men, or even The Assassination of Jesse James and Eastern Promises in this go-around. Nonetheless, here are some chick flicks (in the broadest sense of the term) to keep an eye out for. There doesn't seem to be a clear-cut front-runner this year, so it should be an interesting show!

Best Picture: Juno is representin' here of course, and then there's Atonement, the latest gloomy period romance starring Keira Knightley. My money's on this one going to one of the big man movies, though.

Directing: Juno pops up again in this big category, but again, I'd bet on one of the big three: Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, and No Country For Old Men.

Actress in a Leading Role: Julie Christie's turn in Away From Her and Ellen Page in Juno both have a shot here, but rumour has it Marion Cotillard is favoured, and I never like to bet against Laura Linney or Cate Blanchett come awards season.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Saoirse Ronan gets a shout-out for Atonement, but we all know Cate Blanchett's Bob Dylan is taking this category.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay) : Atonement and Away From Her get shout-outs here. I never have any clue who's going to win the writing awards, though.

Writing (Original Screenplay) : Juno is in the fray once again! Does Lars and the Real Girl count as a chick flick? Hmmm.

Animated Feature Film: Go, Persepolis, Go! She's in tough against Ratatouille, though.

Atonement also gets a nod for Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, and Score. Thank goodness Knightley wasn't nominated again - I can't stand that pouting one-trick-floozy, and I don't see what everyone thinks is so great about her. (See me get indignant! See me get sassy! See me pout! Now give me an Oscar!)

Between them, Atonement and Juno have made sure that chick flicks get some surprisingly decent representation this year. We'll see in just one short week if they can bring home the bling!

See the full list of nominees here. And see Slate's Hollywoodland blog on who won the writers strike here.

Dana Stevens on Juno

Over at Slate, Dana Stevens chronicles the rising Juno backlash (and the anti-backlash backlash) as the Oscars come closer, and the "little movie that could" takes its shot at becoming the first comedy to win Best Picture since Annie Hall. (Sound familiar? See: "Little Miss Sunshine".)

Here's a sample:

"Juno may not have had me at hello, but it managed to win me over by the time Juno's carapace of cleverness finally shows its first chink, as she admits to her disappointed father (J.K. Simmons), "I really don't know what kind of girl I am." Maybe it was Ellen Page's luminous face and brazen self-confidence, or the unexpected transformation of Jennifer Garner's character—beautifully played by Garner and, yes, beautifully written by Diablo Cody. Michael Cera's exquisite comic timing makes even his underwritten character come alive. And I know I'm supposed to sneer at the precious indie-rock soundtrack, but some of those songs are really catchy."

'Carapace of cleverness'? Best. Job. Ever. And people wonder why I want to be a film critic...

(As for Juno, I STILL haven't seen it!)

Awards Season Pt. 1: Razzies, Golden Tomatoes, and Because I Said So

I’m a little late getting to this one – must be because it doesn’t really feel like awards season this year, what with the Golden Globes being reduced to a bad cable newscast and even the Oscars themselves in jeopardy.

Anyhow, the annual Razzies (or in full, Golden Raspberry Awards) honouring the year’s worst in cinema, have come and gone, and the chick flick genre has come out largely unscathed. (Thanks to Jessica Alba, Eddie Murphy and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, for taking most of the heat!) We do have one casualty though – Diane Keaton was nominated for Worst Actress, for her turn as my girl Mandy’s overbearing mother in Because I Said So. The film also garnered the Moldy Tomato award for worst film from RottenTomatoes.com’s Golden Tomatoes awards.

I know, I know: who am I to argue with Rotten Tomatoes? But worst movie of the year, seriously? Did they not see I Know Who Killed Me?

(Neither did I - I don’t do horror. But from what I heard, it could have been up for worst movie of the decade, let alone worst movie of the year.)

Sure, I’ll agree Because I Said So was no diamond in the rom-com rough. But it wasn’t that bad, was it? I mean, Diane Keaton was so aggravating I had to close my eyes and plug my ears a couple times, but wasn’t that part of the point? And I thought it was just a tiny bit fresh and sassy, compared to a lot of the bubblegum stuff that comes out these days. Mandy Moore doing two guys at once? That’s envelope-pushing stuff by chick flick standards. That’s at least an attempt at grounded, real-world messiness, isn’t it?

Plus, Gabriel Macht is so unbelievably smoking hot (I get “un-bloody-hinged” just looking at him – bonus points if you can name that Mandy Moore reference!) that I can’t agree to any movie with him and his dimple in it being named the worst of the year.

In related news, Rotten Tomatoes also gave Juno the award for best comedy of the year. And I still haven’t seen it!

Golden Globes 2008

SAG Awards 2008

Razzies and Golden Tomatoes 2008