The Film Experience

I'll be updating the Oscar charts once the Globe results have settled and the BAFTA nominations are thoroughly parsed. To do so we must ask the time old precursor awards question: who benefitted most from winning or losing at this speed bump on Oscar's highway (sorry for the clumsy metaphor -- I have driving on the brain due to La La Land's big deal opening number). Perhaps the obvious answer is Isabelle Huppert who has had a tremendous week winning the NSFC and the Globe and her movie winning the Globe, too, and finally passing the not insignificant $1 million mark at the box office (making it the one of the most successful foreign language film in the States this year.)

Moonlight's Best Picture win and La La Land's sweep (now the biggest Golden Globe winner of all time with 7 prizes) is perhaps the most "what does it mean?" prize. It's good news for both films obviously, at least for marketing purposes, but since Moonlight's was the last prize of the night and it had won no other awards, will it be anyone's "takeaway" from one of television's biggest awards nights? And do La La Land's seven prizes feel like overkill?

I grilled Team Experience who they thought benefitted from the Globe trophies...

In short there's more than one way to look at the night's winners and losers so I grilled Team Experience on who they thought benefitted most from the trophy party. Do the multiple losses for Lion, Loving, and Hacksaw Ridge fire up their fanbases in the Academy to vote for them this week (Oscar ballots are due by Friday), do some La La Land fans figure their votes aren't needed and bump up their other favorite films on their ballots? Sure the vast majority of voters probably don't "strategize" their ballots like that but there are multiple kinds of voters and they all count.

Daniel: In the awards show equivalent of standing in front of a movie theater screen to block everyone's view but your own, La LA Land trounced its competition in the room, category-by-category, and took home a historical haul of spherical hardware. While another day in the sun was more or less expected for the film, the same cannot be said for the night's second-place finisher - with two Golden Globes - which blissfully is Elle, where Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert twirl more red flags in your face than the Canadian color guard. The film sadly won't have a chance to duplicate its Foreign Language win at the Oscars but Huppert's generous, gracious, mic-grabbing speech should stab the hearts (and shoulders) of a few new Academy voters.

Nick: I'm worried that I have to say La La Land for Screenplay, which is too bad, because even the movie's biggest fans don't seem to think that its primary strength is in the writing. But if people love it this much, as they evidently do, then it's a bigger threat than I realized to claim a writing trophy over Manchester, which I assume is otherwise the front-runner in this category.

Dancin Dan: Manchester By The Sea/Kenneth Longergan. The loss of the Screenplay award to La La Land and Best Drama to Moonlight means it's going in as a double underdog. WATCH OUT.

Lynn: Toss-up between Isabelle Huppert and Moonlight, in that Hollywood got a welcome reminder about how awesome they both are. Sure, the critics have been singing that song for a while now, but let's face it, there's probably a good chunk of Oscar voters who are more likely to remember the GG winners than, say, the NSFC. Others might say La La Land got the biggest boost, but I'm concerned about the inevitable backlash.

Murtada: While Ruth Negga didn't take the stage as a winner, she got two "loving" close ups during Meryl Streep's speech and a few words that charted her journey from Addis Ababa to playing Virginian Mildred Loving. Couple that with her smashing red carpet which was a hit on Twitter earlier in the night, and we bet more people now know her name.

Eric: Probably Aaron Taylor-Johnson? He wasn't to be taken too seriously when he was just a nominee, but now as a winner, in an always-weird category, could he sneak in for a nomination?

Kim: Given that the HFPA LOVES Portman, having given her two Globes already, I was totally expecting her to win. I know Huppert has cleaned up with Critics Awards, but winning the Globe over Portman playing Jackie Kennedy feels like major momentum.

Manuel: Huppert, undeniably. Between Verhoeven's win and Isabelle's own, you have to hope enough Oscar voters will catch up with Elle and realize they'd be silly not to nominate such a towering performance.

Steven: I had totally counted Meryl out of the race...until that incredible retrospective and of course her speech. That potent reminder of her talent, success, and power arrived at a crucial moment.

David: Meryl - after that incredible, rousing, precise speech, it's hard to not want to vote for her for something, and where else can Oscar voters look but at Florence Foster Jenkins? Even though I don't like the performance, I can't really blame them.

HOW ABOUT YOU? WHO WAS THE BIGGEST WINNER OF THE NIGHT IN YOUR EYES?

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