Globe Winner Predictions. A Nail Biting Night?

I normally look forward to Golden Globe night with the feverish pitch I otherwise save for Oscar Nomination Morning and Oscar Night itself. They're the holy trinity of awards season Father (Oscar Noms), Son (Oscar Night) and uh... Holy Ghost (The Globes). Well, there are spirits involved. I expect that the drunkest table will belong to The Help or Bridesmaids. Here's to inebriated ladies!

And here are my predictions. I'm just going for it and predicting a return to... January 2003. Wait, what? Read on!

MOVIES

BEST PICTURE, DRAMA

• The Descendants
• The Help
• Hugo
• The Ides of March
• Moneyball
• War Horse 

With most of the attention swinging towards The Artist, Best Picture Drama feels like a free for all this year. Three films (The Descendants, Hugo and The Help) look like feasible winners since they've retained heat after the nominations. Common wisdom points to the inexplicable near-universal love for The Descendants but for whatever reason I'm imagining a repeat of the 2002/2003 Globes season wherein the throbbing heart of a female epic (The Hours) beat out an expensive Scorsese film and the Alexander Payne film about the widower dealing with his angry daughter whilst having spiritual awakenings. (Gangs of New York and About Schmidt)
Prediction: The Help
Spoiler: The Descendants 

BEST PICTURE, COMEDY or MUSICAL

• 50/50
• The Artist
• Bridesmaids
• Midnight in Paris
• My Week With Marilyn

This one seems all sewn up for The Artist but I think it's worth noting that the Comedy or Musical category tends to be where the Golden Globes house their biggest surprises on average. That said a defeat for the Artist would be the kind of shocker that only happens once a decade. 
Prediction: The Artist
Spoiler: Bridesmaids (imagine the uproar!) 

BEST DIRECTOR 

• Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
• George Clooney, The Ides of March
• Michel Hazanavicus, The Artist
• Alexander Payne, The Descendants
• Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Hazanavicius may or may not be the frontrunner for the Oscar. It's tough to say with lesser known directors when they're battling cinematic giants who win awards based on their whole filmography rather than the specific film they're up for. But I'm guessing that the presence of Woody Allen pulls enough votes from Martin Scorsese to keep Hazanavicius in the lead.
Prediction: Hazanavicius
Spoiler: Scorsese

PREDICTIONS IN ALL CATEGORIES after the jump...

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Home Alink

Self Styled Siren on Margaret. She has no affinity for mess.
24 Frames talks to Anna Paquin about the resurrected movie.
Roger Ebert's Journal on the Oscar lalapalooza. Very strange piece. What's going on here? Ebert seems suddenly willfully ignorant of various Oscar rules claiming, among other things, that The Artist would be ineligible for Oscars if it were in French. Uh, not so, Ebert, not so.
Towleroad new photos from Magic Mike, Soderbergh's stripper movie.

IndieWire ten shooting stars of European film, Elena Anaya (The Skin I Live in) and Alexander's little brother Bill Skarsgård.
Boy Culture Joan Crawford is not one of Rick's (Santorum) Fans! I love it. 
Deja View pencil tests and the challenge of designing Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.
Stale Popcorn on rejected movie posters. I'd never seen some of these. Love a rejected poster from Bugsy that prominently features Annette Bening. 

We Need To Talk About Kevin McAllister...

The crazy thing is that if they wanted to go blonde for Kevin, couldn't Macaulay have worked? 

Interview-lapalooza

Charlize has a sharp eye for great characters.Interviews for the films of 2011

Who would you love to see interviewed in the future?

 Speak up and I'll try and chase them down. I aim to catch these days!

This Season's Conversations

• Corey Stoll (Midnight in Paris) on two great writers Hemingway and Allen and his career-changing breakthrough
• Charlize Theron (Young Adult) on Mavis Gary, hugging day players, and battling Snow White
• Bret McKenzie (The Muppets) is finished with Middle Earth but still playing with those Muppets
• Jessica Chastain (The Help, Take Shelter) won't be slowing down in 2012. She's got big plans and many character creations (no repeats!) on the way.
• Arianna Phillips (W.E.) the great costume designer on her long collaboration with Madonna
• Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene) likes it minimal. He stays ambiguous to the end. 
• Judy Greer (The Descendants) is still girl next door relatable but ever more fabulous.
• Olivia Colman (Tyrannosaur) on mommy Meryl's Iron Lady and digging deep for her new film about an abused Christian woman. 

• David Cronenberg (A Dangerous Method) always has something fascinating to say. His new film goes back to the source of so many of his cinematic preoccupations.
• Mike Mills (Beginners) made his personal stories into art. So do his characters.
• Andrew Haigh (Weekend) on casting his perfect chemistry actors and trying to see the film through the audience eyes. It's hard for him; he edited it in his own bedroom.

• Ben Foster (Rampart) is dying for a musical comedy. But he loves working with the "beasts" of cinema.
• Roland Emmerich (Anonymous) likes it big but detours for a little Shakespeare
• Vera Farmiga & Dagmara Dominczyk (Higher Ground) have rich girl girl chemistry and a fine film in common.
• Enrico Casarosa (La Luna) on his animated short film Oscar finalist. 

• Demian Bichir  & Chris Weitz (A Better Life) preparing for emotional climaxes and navigating awards season.
• Christina Hendricks (Drive) on acting during car chases and "that scene".  
• Ludivine Sagnier (Love Crimes) isn't content with being the best of the current French temptresses. She's chasing the legacies of the true legends of French cinema.
• Chris Miller (Puss in Boots) on how one becomes a director of animated features and whether or not he's a cat person

MORE TO COME!

Say What? Jessica & Chloe

Amuse us. Add a caption or dialogue for this photo of Jessica Chastain and Chloe Moretz from last night's BFCA red carpet...

You know you want to!

Distant Relatives: Walkabout and Meek's Cutoff

Robert here w/ Distant Relatives, exploring the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Jenny Agutter in "Walkabout" and Michelle Williams in "Meek's Cutoff"

Western people have something of a parasitic relationship with nature. But that's okay. If Werner Herzog is to believed, nature doesn't much like us either. The two films we look at this week, Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout and Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff look at the relationship of people trapped within the land and how it compares to their relationship with people of the land or who represent the land in their foreignness and threat to those considered 'civilized.' Along the way issues of trust, understanding, innocence, power, gender and whether one can overcome the attitudes and beliefs into which they're boxed, are encountered along with predictably arrid conditions.

Walkabout starts to roll when a teenaged girl and her younger brother (Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg) are violently abandoned in the Australian outback. They wander lost for a good deal of time until they encounter an Aborigine (David Gulpilil) who becomes something of their guide despite the great distance in culture and understanding between the three. Meek's Cutoff follows a wagon train lost on the Oregon Trail. Of no help is their wilderness guide Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), though of some help may be an Indian they've captured. Leading the contingent to trust in and follow their captives lead, though more out of desperation than principle is one woman, Emily (Michelle Williams).

Both films could be read as tales of reversal of fortune where individuals from the intruding aggressor class find themselves at the will of someone they consider strange and savage...

Questions of Trust and Gender after the jump.

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