Nothing gold can stay

Poor Kathryn "Miss Golden Globes" Eastwood. She's no Allison, or even Kyle. And is the cinetrix the only one who felt icky when she realized that the poor sprog has the same name and the same po-faced, unfinished quality as "my sister, my daughter" from Chinatown?

OK, now that everyone's as creeped out as I am [you're welcome], let's talk about these pesky awards. I think it will come as a surprise to no one that all of us seem to view the Golden Globes with uncomfortable ambivalence--witness Aaron's and Filmbrain's bifurcated picks--which has made our somewhat arbitrary decision to build our first Conversation around them, er, challenging. There have been so many far more interesting sidebars in the comments these last few days that coming back to the Globes feels like slinking back to the person who brought you to the party when you'd much rather keep talking with the fascinating person over by the bar.

In Best Picture Drama nominee Finding Neverland, there's a bit of backstory/exposition that captures my own complicated history with awards shows. Barrie [Depp] confides in Sylvia Llewelyn Davies [Winslet] that there was a moment in his childhood at which the boy in him disappeared forever. This revelation [there's even the awkward "ah, so that's what the title means" dialogue] is meant, of course, to put the creator of "Peter Pan" through a pop psychological workup that any studio exec could grok and greenlight, but it also deepens the resonance later in the film of the eldest Llewelyn Davies' boy's first step down the road to responsibility, once his mother's illness is made known.

Sad to say, the cinetrix experienced a similar end of innocence moment when wrinkly alien E.T. lost out to that wizened apple of a man, Gandhi. That eat-your-vegetables, anti-populist, self-congratulatory Oscar selection in 1982 may just have turned her into the cynical critic she is today.

So, without further ado, the nominees.

For Best Picture, Drama, I've only seen Closer and Neverland. Hollywood loves movies about itself, but the Hollywood Foreign Press? Who knows? My cynical choice is Million Dollar Baby because it's the Academy that owes Scorsese, not HFPA. But I suspect Payne will get belated props for reining in Nicholson on his last picture and take Best Director.

For Best Picture, Comedy or Musical, the state of my sock drawer kept me away from Phantom, and the romantic in me wants Eternal Sunshine, but like attracts like, so the cynical critic in me picks Sideways.

For many of the other awards, I [like David but for less good reasons] just haven't seen enough of the nominees to pick a personal favorite, but I suspect my colleagues' clear-eyed prognosticating will bear out. I think Kate Winslet consistently turns in fantastic, nuanced work; that Jamie Foxx made some silk purse out of that sow's ear of a biopic; that Scarlett better keep busy before gravity takes her "girls" for a ride and she ages out of ingenue roles; that Johnny and Don don't need no stinkin' awards to keep us watching [ditto Clive]; and that Paul will continue to get more than his fair share of the love this awards season.

Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry will take the best screenplay as a consolation prize, and the cinetrix will wonder yet again why the HFPA divides best picture but not original and adapted screenplays. Best original score will be awarded to some hack, and best original song could doubtless double as an entry in the Eurovision song contest.

And the cinetrix has already revealed her excrable taste in television; best not to dwell on it further. [She's still too busy fuming about the Before Sunset shut-out, about which more later.]

Get that popcorn popping. It's going to be a bumpy night.

Comments

[dvd]

Cynical or not, Finding Neverland isn't an eighth of the film E.T. is. Count me in with those surprised by its status as a contender on any major level.

[Matt]

I don't like E.T., but I really don't like Finding Neverland, with the exception of Depp's performance, which is wasted, wasted, wasted on this film.

What's more, the stupid thing got me in trouble with my best friend's mother, who saw it with the two of us: when the lights came up, she was crying, and when I sat there, stone cold, she told me that I clearly have no heart.

[dvd]

Obviously you don't, if you don't like E.T.!

[Aaron]

Maybe I liked Finding Neverland as much as I did because I watched it through the prism of having seen Monsters Ball, which I absolutely hated, and I just thought Marc Forster was much more restrained (believe-it-or-not) in his direction. Yeah, it was a sappy tearjerker that was full of obvious moments, but Depp was magnificent and so were Winslet and Freddie Highmore. I was somewhat appalled at its National Board of Review win, but I thought it was a nice movie, and I enjoyed it. But then, I loved E.T. too, and I consider myself heartless, so Matt I have no idea what you must be.

[Matt]

Dead?