Live-Blogging the 2013 Golden Globes
10:00 Good night, everybody! Fey and Poehler called their ceremony "the beautiful mess they hoped it would be." It didn't feel that beautiful to me, and I'm curious if it's quite what they wanted; they sure do make themselves scarce as the ceremonies wear on. On top of what I just wrote, I'm most happy for Alfonso Cuarón, Spike Jonze, Amy Adams, and the Frozen filmmakers. And, sight unseen, for Cranston, Wright, Moss, and Poehler.
9:59 A barely-awake Johnny Depp did what needed to be done and bestowed upon 12 Years a Slave its rightful prize. I know I just said how much I love another nominee and how much I like a third one (Philomena and Rush feel like non-entities, especially the latter, and not only in awards terms.) Still, Slave feels to me like their unambiguous superior, even if you're treating creative achievement separately from thematic and contextual importance. I'm delighted for the team who got to accept the top prize, and thank goodness for Onstage MVP Sarah Paulson, feeding a nervous McQueen some necessary names, particularly Sean Bobbitt's and Dede Gardner's.
But I mentioned Atonement before, and as befell that so-called front-runner after the Globes, I'm worried that 12 Years comes out of the evening feeling like a loser even though it won. Oh, well. Makes the Oscar predicting game more interesting, I guess! And the prize will still sit on the right mantel.
9:56 BEST PICTURE (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: 12 Years a Slave, but Gravity is nearly as superb. Captain Phillips, while not on the same level as those two, is an easy contender to feel good about.
I'm Predicting: 12 Years a Slave, in an Atonement-esque situation of taking the top prize even after looking quite weak all night.
9:53 Anyway (sorry, for the see-sawing), I really liked Dallas Buyers Club and haven't felt too persuaded by any of the recent takedowns and ideological critiques of its standpoint and historical revisionism. But McConaughey and Leto have made it harder tonight to feel settled in my affection for the film, through their discomfiting representations of the movie and of themselves. Again, they weren't awful, exactly. But they whiffed on the opportunity to be more ambassadorial for the film, or to reassure anyone who feels uneasy with their involvements and perspectives, or the politics of the film. Didn't help that neither said "AIDS," "HIV," or anything less euphemistic than "all the Rayons"; I'm sure they spoke from the heart, but they seemed a little trapped in the kinds of cautious euphemisms and silences that their characters explicitly suffered under.
9:52 Okay, so Blanchett. I mean, don't get me wrong, she was totally poised and everything, and took inspiration from the HFPA and blended Comedy and Drama in a barely distinguishable combo. That was cool, but also made me a little dizzy; I might have preferred a speech that was more obviously silly or sincere. Anyway, it was definitely a post-vodka, late-in-the-evening toss-off. We have more to look forward to from future speeches. But she did say that Dianne Wiest was her all-time inspiration as an actress, and that is Everything. Please, newspaper editors, make that your headline.
9:50 Matthew McConaughey's speech isn't landing that well, partly because of McConaughey'isms, and partly because he's pitching it a little too hard. And he's sounding a little... unreconstructed. The 12 Years a Slave table is having an awfully hard time not looking dismayed by their total shutout so far.
9:48 BEST ACTOR (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: McConaughey, but much like Wilson Phillips, you won't see me cry (cry... cry...) if Ejiofor or maybe Redford pops up there.
I'm Predicting: And I'm thinking Redford might. I was thinking that even before 12 Years started striking out all night.
9:46 Cate extemporizes quite well. Pretty well. Honestly, it gets a little weird at times. But hold on, before I can say more.
9:45 BEST ACTRESS (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Cate Blanchett, but I bet I'm alone in the world in holding that sentiment. Specifically, I am rooting for her to say to her husband, as she did upon winning her Elizabeth Globe, "I'm so pleased to have met you!"
I'm Predicting: Cate Blanchett, but probably by a fraction of the vote. Or maybe on a technicality. Gosh, how's she gonna pull this off?
9:44 Leonardo DiCaprio comes out to an awful vagina joke from the weirdly flat Poehler and Fey, and then finishes his speech. Charming. Even more charming when he says "Filomania."
9:40 Jared Leto has seized his moment to approach Bono. I hope he didn't mince, or some famous auteur might think to cast him as someone gay, which he would of course obviously be totally fine with.
9:38 An American Hustle producer, only minimally paraphrased: "One of the great privileges of making movies is that we get to make movies... about... people." Brad and Jen (no not that Brad and Jen, get OVER it, people!!!) are way more entertained by whatever they're saying to each other than by their producer's slackjawed drawling.
9:37 BEST PICTURE (MUSICAL/COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Inside Llewyn Davis, which is weird, because again, it's hard to even articulate what I liked about it, or to quantify exactly how much.
I'm Predicting: Hustle seems like a safe bet.
9:35 Chris Hemsworth and the real Niki Lauda are here to introduce Rush. Lauda thinks the scripted stuff on the TelePromTer is a little hard on him. Rush is like the biggest possible also-ran tonight, but it did win The Derek Prize, because by far his most excited reaction was to seeing the star of Good bye, Lenin!, which he adores, suddenly show up on TV.
9:32 What's with these iPad ads that seem explicitly inspired by The Tree of Life? The montage, the moving cameras, the sunflares, the silent actors, the resplendent oceanography.
9:29 Reese Witherspoon walks out with an envelope, as though she's going to announce a prize, but then she gives an intro to the winless 12 Years a Slave. I don't get it. Did someone not show up? Is 12 Years not just struggling to win prizes but turning into such an afterthought that they forgot to assign a dedicated introducer? Did she not even have an envelope to begin with, and yet I hallucinated one? I might be entering that demented stage at the end of an evening. I think I know who I'll blame that on.
9:27 Do you see what happens?? Do you see what happens when I give DiCaprio an inch?? I barely gave even an inch, and he just plowed through the opening.
9:26 BEST ACTOR (MUSICAL/COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Oscar Isaac by a mile, even though I think they're all good. Yes, I even think DiCaprio's got good moments in Wolf of Wall Street, but don't press me on it or I'll retreat!
I'm Predicting: Dern, who hopefully will say something about baby Laura, but I bet Leo's a threat, too.
9:21 BEST TV COMEDY SERIES
I'm Rooting For: Girls, because I finally started watching and I'm hoping it stays great.
I'm Predicting: Brooklyn Nine Nine, because I think that HFPA will do that kingmaking thing they sometimes like to do with new shows.
'Twas as I foretold! The man I take to be the show runner gets off one good line about his two-and-a-half-year-old, "who is a nightmare," but otherwise has an air of desperation or of trying too hard. Which would not surprise me from a Sandberg ally. And whose brilliant idea was it to get that dizzy comedienne Uma Thurman to introduce this prize? Or Chris Evans, who seems to be edging into Christian Slater territory? I know some of you think I'm too hard on Uma, but Real Talk: does she ever not seem awkward in moments like this? Should she come anywhere near a comedy presentation? Drew Barrymore's in the audience! She's right there, with nothing to do!
9:20 How worried do I need to be about how sad around the mouth Ben Affleck is looking? I ask Garner-wise. Boy does that guy look busted. Not trying to start trouble. Sorry.
9:18 Even though I was a McQueen voter in my heart, I'm just so elated to hear an Alfonso Cuarón speech on an awards telecast. Just when I can barely contain the glee, he invokes "Chivo" Lubezki. And tells a great, campaign-friendly true story about telling Sandra Bullock he was going to give her herpes. (You had to be there. It was worth it.)
9:17 BEST DIRECTOR
I'm Rooting For: McQueen, barely over Cuarón.
I'm Predicting: Ditto. But is Russell a factor, too?
9:15 It's too hard to talk or even think about Neeson. He'd be getting the same press Nicolas Cage does, except he seems nice and not crazy, his movies make money, and also Because. The Because is so uncomfortable, but the career trajectory is just... Where's my tilapia sandwich.
9:14 Just supplied an important emendation to my post from 8:52. Doof. Wishful thinking re: Miyazaki.
9:12 Bradley Cooper is utilizing the commercial break to lay his palms on Ben Affleck's shoulders. My god, that guy moves fast! Please tell me in the comments if you, too, have been approached by a smiling Bradley Cooper during this telecast. I myself have not, which I cannot explain.
9:10 Keaton's singing. In something approaching a baby-girl voice. She sold that thing as well as one could; she seems to mean every word. But I'm sorry, it's just more interesting trying to decipher the more mixed-looking emotions on the faces of all these other women who've starred for Woody: Roberts, Barrymore, Wiest, Watts, Hemingway, and (predictably) Streep are all hard to read throughout this.
Paying tribute to someone's distinguished career directing actresses and writing female roles would normally be 1000% up my alley, and of course it is part of what I love about Allen's movies. But there's something discomfiting about singling this out so substantially as the virtue of his filmography. Feels somehow like special pleading, and to hazy ends.
9:09 WIEST IS HERE. WIEST IS HERE. WIEST IS HERE. WIEST IS HERE.
9:06 Everyone's been so freaking nervous all night that Diane Keaton, fully silver-haired, seems utterly relaxed. She takes the tribute straight to the strength of Allen's female characters, drawing a direct line from her own Annie to Cate in Jasmine. Hard, hard sell on the 179 actresses who have acted for Allen. Which, when you do the arithmetic doesn't seem like a ton for someone who's made 40 movies. And I'm not sure I can sign on to this bit about how none of these women's roles have ever overlapped at all. Let's ask Naomi Watts and Ellen Page and post-Husbands and Wives Judy Davis how they feel about that. But I quibble. (I know, I know, "Eat the fish, b***h.")
9:05 We're being sold a putrid, disgusting lie that he hasn't been repeating himself for decades. (Calm down, I'm only referring to the title fonts.)
9:04 Mariel Hemingway's in the audience, which is intriguing. Hollywood Ending's in the tribute montage, which is horrifying.
9:02 Emma Stone defies everything, everything I said before by turning out NOT to have slipped into a bank vault somewhere after her America's Sweetheartness got waaaaaay too much. Oh, I get it, that bank vault has involved starring in Woody Allen's next movie. Emma was still a molecule circa Crimes and Misdemeanors, but she gets to lead off this Cecil B. DeMille bit.
9:01 Tina Fey to Amy Poehler: "I love you, and there's a special place in hell for you." What does she mean?
8:56 Amy wins! She's getting a massage from Bono as she gets the good news, and celebrates it as most people would, by planting about three huge wet ones right on Bono. And then gives a speech that proves she's actually as nervous and vulnerable as everyone else, despite her stellar career of brilliant deflection. Way to go, Poehler! One day I'll watch an episode of your show!
8:55 BEST ACTRESS (TV COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Poehler, because come on!!!
I'm Predicting: I wonder if it's Dunham again, but can they just give it Amy? Hasn't she done enough?
8:54 Llewyn Davis clip reminds me of how fond I am of the movie, but also of how impossible it is to make it sound appealing to Derek, who's asking, and who's never liked a Coen Brothers movie.
8:52 BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
I'm Rooting For: The Wind Rises, though I love Frozen, too.* (Ed.: Yep, I said it. Yep, I blew it. The other nominees were The Croods and Despicable Me 2, not The Wind Rises.)
I'm Predicting: Frozen, though The Wind Rises is not impossible. Maybe it got extra points from that amazing Miyazaki joke in Jimmy Fallon's SNL? (Ed.: It bears repeating that I'm a doofus.)
I'm sitting next to someone who is feeling instantly smitten by supremely off-putting presenter Chris Pine, so now we're fighting. I'm too bewildered to pay almost any attention to the Frozen directors' speech.
8:49 TV ad for Enough Said on DVD, which'll have to do in the absence of Abilify ads (what is happening with that??). James Gandolfini's just so special in it. Even short glimpses fill the heart.
8:47 Douglas thanks Catherine, so that'll be a good for a paragraph in everyone's write-up. Maybe we could all devote that paragraph instead to Derek's perfectly good question about why they couldn't find one actually gay actor to play any of the main roles in Candelabra.
8:46 Thank you, Michael, for that joke about maybe mincing too much in Traffic, and thus inspiring Soderbergh with this casting idea.
8:45 Douglas. Apparently it's his fourth win, out of 11 nominations. He probably doesn't know that, either. Or maybe he does. He at least knows that he didn't act in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is more than the Globes announcer knows.
8:44 BEST ACTOR (TV MOVIE/MINISERIES)
I'm Rooting For: Elba or Ejiofor, out of general admiration, or Damon, for the same reason, even though I wasn't taken with him in Candelabra.
I'm Predicting: Douglas deserves to have written something down. Somewhere, a Welsh woman will be weeping.
8:43 Jimmy Fallon is trying to marionette Melissa McCarthy through an improv bit where Melissa McCarthy thinks she's Matt Damon. Belly flop, I'm sad to say.
8:42 It's The Great Beauty. The director: "Thank you to Italy, that's a crazy country, but a beautiful one." Did I get that right?
8:39 BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
I'm Rooting For: The Wind Rises, which is probably the only nominee that has no shot.
I'm Predicting: Blue Is the Warmest Color, probably, but I wouldn't be staggered by The Great Beauty or The Hunt or The Past. Should Blue have been released later? Wait, they've tricked me into thinking like an awards slut and not an art-for-art's-sake distributor!
Zoe Saldana's presenting with Orland Bloom (in a confusing profusion of blues), because she's the new Kristin Scott Thomas: the only actress anyone trusts to get all the non-English names, vowels, and phrases correct.
8:34 BEST ACTOR (TV COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: I don't have such a vested interest in this one, but I tend to like Jason Bateman?
I'm Predicting: Andy Samberg, because Seth Meyers is presenting.
This is what I was worried about. A Samberg speech that makes him look like the frattiest, luckiest improv-comedy troupe president there ever was. Meryl's already giggling by the time he's walking to the stage, so I guess there's that. Liev Schreiber thinks Samberg's semi-lampooning of the standard awards-speech template is so unfunny that he actually starts squirming. It's not bad, really, but I just tend to have Samberg allergies, unless he's doing a music video with Portman, Bolton, or Gaga. Otherwise? Spare. But I haven't seen the show, either, and maybe it's good.
8:33 Seth Meyers and Julie Bowen are willing to whore themselves to the HFPA to get a trophy. It's what they say, and they may or may not be kidding.
8:31 Laura Dern gets to introduce Nebraska, and pay sweet tribute to her dad and to Alexander Payne, whose first movie she starred in, as we know. If you're going to bring me around on Payne, you may as well scooch him next to Laura Dern, even verbally.
8:30 Jonze is the same cutie-patootie that he was when he presented Her here in Chicago about a month back. He's so charming and sincere and sweet that even Taylor Swift notices his existence. Emma and Spike are like a nuclear-fission experiment, cracking the Langean ice and smashing the Swiftian hauteur. Is the Nobel committee watching??
8:29 BEST SCREENPLAY
I'm Rooting For: I can't say I'm totally sold on any of these scripts, but I guess I'd say 12 Years a Slave if you look past some of the awkward dialogue. Runners-up would be American Hustle for the intricate architecture, even though Russell essentially directed against that architecture really paying off; and Her, which sometimes oversold its conceits but is still imaginative and interesting.
I'm Predicting: Her, because it calls the most attention to its own writing. And I'd admittedly love to see that sweetie-pie Spike Jonze give a speech.
8:28 Walks out with a two-olive martini and her Louboutins in her hand to present Best Screenplay. Even Jessica Lange laughs openly. Even Jessica Lange is charmed.
8:27 EMMA!!!!
8:20 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
I'm Rooting For: Cooper, but only barely over Abdi. I'd be thrilled for either of them, and perfectly happy with Leto.
I'm Predicting: Leto, especially since people on the red carpet kept cooing about Dallas Buyers. Maybe I'm underestimating McConaughey?
Leto wins, and his first few attempts at bro-y comedy land badly. Not just because they're not that funny but also, if you're asking me, because they read too much like a distancing device from the sensibility of the character he played. He does better when earnestly testifying to how good yet unexpected it feels to be so embraced for his first film performance in six years after "pursuing other dreams." Here, the camera people take a risk—I bet Colin Farrell identifies with winning a prize after seeming for so many years like a distracted weirdo dissolute!—but that doesn't pay off. Farrell looks crushed by ennui. Bradley Cooper is surely not rolling his eyes at Leto's victory, and yet, through the magic of quick-cut editing, he is interpolated to look as though he is rolling his eyes at Leto's victory.
8:16 BEST ACTRESS (TV DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Really any of them, but maybe Robin Wright, since she's been at this for so long, unrewarded.
I'm Predicting: That Tatiana Maslany, because it sure sounds like she brings down the house.
It's Wright, and boy does she sprint all the way down there. She sounds like she always sounds, kind of loopy but deeply thoughtful. "I'm not gonna go through the whole thing you've all heard a million times, thank you all!"
All of this, by the way, follows one of Fey's and Poehler's best bits, where Poehler pretended to be Fey's surly son from a previous marriage, hurling Hollywood-based vituperations at her actress mom: "I hate you, and Jacqueline Bisset hates you, too!" She then tries to identify her undisclosed father from the Globes audience, alighting quickly on Idris Elba or Harvey Weinstein.
8:07 BEST ACTRESS (MUSICAL/COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Amy Adams, in a narrow squeak over Meryl Streep.
I'm Predicting: Amy Adams, in a narrow squeak over Meryl Streep.
It's Amy!! It's so exciting to finally see her get out of a chair at one of these things. With misty eyes, she says, "I always cry when I'm not supposed to, and then when a director asks me to, I can't cry. It just sucks." The NBC watermark looks distractingly like a tattoo. She gives a very, very sweet tribute to the woman who took her on 15 years ago as a client. Or who cast her in her first role. Or who did something. Shit, I sort of missed it! I was taken up in pro-Amy joy. Thankfully, she ends her speech with a tribute to joy. (By the way, Downey: that opening bit was great at the 2010 ceremony, but as you suggested from the mic, you can't always count on a sequel to be great.)
8:05 Fun to watch with Derek, because you can say things like, "Did you know he's Angelina Jolie's father?" and he's like, "WHAT?? REALLY?!"
8:03 Voight! I would never have called that correctly, if the HFPA didn't seem like such a Voight-Jolie dominion, for more than a decade now. The room is really woopy about it! But not Colin Farrell. He lets out a really impressive sigh of boredom as Voight starts reciting the necessary beatitudes. The three Never Let Me Go-ish Interchangeables who presented the award are plugged into discreet sockets in the back, jacking up their battery supply so they don't get thrown onto the Unisex Ingenue Heap right behind the Hilton.
8:01 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (TV)
I'm Rooting For: Corey Stoll, on principle
I'm Predicting: Jon Voight, maybe?
7:54 Bono scoops it for "Ordinary Love," which means Taylor Swift is already writing a catchy tune about a greedy Irishman. The Edge says U2 has been working for President Mandela since the 70s: "It's taken us 25 years to write this song." The Globes producers cut to Hayden Panettiere, as anyone would. Chris Martin gets a shout-out from the stage, which will incense millions of people who fight on pop-music message boards. Julia Roberts looks more enchanted with Bono's mostly touching eulogy-cum-sales-pitch than Meryl Streep does.
7:52 BEST ORIGINAL SONG
I'm Rooting For: "Please Mr. Kennedy"
I'm Predicting: "Let It Go," which I think isn't that great, but I understand a phenom when I'm amidst one, and I'd at least be happy for Lopez.
7:49 BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
I'm Rooting For: 12 Years a Slave, because even if Zimmer's copying himself, he's copying great material that nobody rewarded when they should have, and he probably deserves a few more trophies than he's reaped.
I'm Predicting: Could it be the Mandela score? That's the sort of curveball this category used to throw at the Globes. I bet it's Slave or Gravity. Let's say Slave.
For some reason, it takes Kate Beckinsale, Sean Combs, and Usher together to announce this award. I hope we at least get a buddy comedy or a bank-heist thriller out of this. A slightly unkempt-looking but quickly charming Alex Ebert wins for All Is Lost, but has trouble making the words. He didn't need to, while he was giving his girlfriend a pretty deep lip-lock upon rising from his chair. His speech rides the thin line between eloquence and heezy-weezy abstraction. Best line, to writer-director J.C. Chandor: "Thanks for letting me try, all over your movie."
7:47 Steve Coogan here to introduce Philomena with the real Philomena Lee, looking magnificent in rich purple, if a bit overwhelmed. Addled editing crew cuts to Helen Mirren because Judi Dench doesn't seem to be there, and sometimes any Dame'll do. Future Dame Emma Thompson makes things easier by giving a beaming, one-woman standing ovation.
7:45 A Microsoft ad that baldly appropriates footage of Malala Yousafzai, Margaret Thatcher, disabled athletes, and Gabrielle Giffords as an implicit sales tactic for... new computers? Then a commercial narrated by John C. Reilly, which feels gratuitous.
7:43 Bradley Cooperflirting with chatting up Joaquin Phoenix—Cooper always seems to do a great job finding everyone in the crowd—while Jim Carrey (??) chats up Spike Jonze just over Bradley's shoulder. I've got nothing to say on that, but maybe you want to know?
7:42 Yep, it's Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan thinks Aaron Paul will speak most eloquently for the whole crew, and what he gets in return is Paul hollering, "Yeah, bitch!" So... maybe there was another way to go.
7:41 BEST TV SERIES (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Masters of Sex, just because it's new and an inspired concept, or Breaking Bad, because it has kept some of my friends alive during various periods of midwinter despond.
I'm Predicting: Probably the same two shows, or maybe House of Cards? Becuase it was the final season, I'll say Bad.
7:40 Cranson thanks "his beautiful wife Robin" juuuuuuust in the nick of Stick Man time. He always seems like the nicest guy in the room.
7:37 BEST ACTOR (TV DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Bryan Cranston, or maybe Michael Sheen
I'm Predicting: Bryan Cranston, who is like emperor of the world at this point.
Cranston runs up to fetch it from Aaron Eckhart and Paula Patton, the latter of whom is wearing a pretty and structurally complicated white dress that plays like a tribute to the Cloud City of Bespin, or maybe to the Ghost Orchid of the Everglades. Maybe to both.
7:35 Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie, here to intro The Wolf of Wall Street from a malfunctioning TelePromTer. Someone hands them scrap paper from the wings. It's yellow. It's got drivel on it. What's written on it is so bad that Robbie has to turn away, chuckling, and Hill deadpans it in order to save it. There are shots from the movie that repeat even in the space of a 45-second clip. Such visual riches, that movie.
7:34 Derek and I agree that Poehler and Fey aren't really landing tonight. Admittedly, it's hard, with the old gag of how unpronounceable the names of HFPA journalists are, and how dubious their publications. Still, Gwyneth Paltrow gets a bigger albeit unwitting laugh just by haughtily opening a water bottle. (It's probably not water.)
7:33 "Why do we care about men flinging themselves down the course of a luge? How is it that we put away our worldly differences for 18 days?" Um, we don't, and we don't? These Olympics ads ought to step back from the rhetorical questions.
7:28 Matt Damon's here to introduce Captain Phillips, according to the Greengrass Transitive Property. Kerry Washington looks extremely excited by someone just off screen: she pumps her fists at them, beams open-mouthed at them, shakes her hips at them, and sort of does a full-body dance-and-giggle at them, even while she's technically talking to someone else. WHO IS IT???? I badly, badly want it to be Emma Thompson.
7:25 BEST ACTRESS (TV MOVIE/MINISERIES)
I'm Rooting For: Jessica Lange, forever
I'm Predicting: Elisabeth Moss
It's Moss! A Jane Campion-themed speech is now inevitable!! Jessica Lange preserves her preternatural ability to look unimpressed, even by sweet tributes from winning nominees. Elisabeth seems adorable. She thanks "Jane" but never says "Campion," so I'm going through a difficult moment. It's helped a bit by her toast to the brilliant Australian d.p. Adam Arkapaw. I think I love the red, black, and silver metallic dress, though I'm not sure how to describe it, or... how to defend it? What to say about it? Whatever, thrilled for Moss. My Top of the Lake DVD gets here tomorrow!
7:22 BEST TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES
I'm Rooting For: Time to watch Coven, at least. No real preference.
I'm Predicting: Candelabra, even though I found it awkward and mostly unilluminating. But I guess I'm impressed that they at least got it made. And I loved Debbie Reynolds' look at her son when his slot machine turns out to have no money in it, even when she wins.
7:21 Mark Ruffalo, who seems ill-cast in the forthcoming The Normal Heart, and Naomi Watts, who seems ill-cast in anything that's apparently billed as a comedy.
7:16 This might be the single most alcohol-defined moment I've ever seen behind a dais at an awards show, complete with bleeped-out profanities and a lot of long pauses. Eventually she thanks everyone who ever gave her joy, and tells everyone who "gave her shit" to do what her mother always suggested to similar folks: "Go to hell, and don't come back!" Then recommends universal forgiveness as the world's best beauty treatment. Reverse shot of the audience reveals everyone's discomfort. Laura Dern, that sunbeam of maternal solicitude, looks the most actively worried for Bisset, but also like she might be giggling a bit. She stands out because everyone else is frozen in place. And also because of the hair.
7:13 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (TV)
I'm Rooting For: Janet McTeer
I'm Predicting: Monica Potter
But I'm already down to 1-out-of-2, because Jacqueline Bisset's just won for whatever Dancing on the Edge is. Even she seems floored. Her walk to the stage is as long as Jennifer Lawrence's speech was. Bisset is still ravishing. Her "speech" for the first 10 seconds is an homage to Anna Paquin's at the Oscars.
7:10 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
I'm Rooting For: Lupita Nyong'o
I'm Predicting: Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence still loves I Heart Huckabees, even if David O. Russell can't be bothered to. Also loves Spanking the Monkey and Three Kings, so we're feeling good about her. Why were Hanks and Bullock so subdued?
7:07 Fey: To star in Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey bravely lost 45 pounds, "or what actresses call 'being in a movie.'"
7:06 Now we've gone A+++ on George Clooney, "proving that he'd rather float away and die than spend one more minute in space with a woman his own age."
7:04 Tina and Amy nail their first A++ joke about that gross social climber Julia Louis-Dreyfus who is now sitting with the film people. She's spotted smoking an electronic cigarette and shoving Reese Witherspoon away when she tries to snap a selfie.
7:02 Meryl Streep, "proving there are still great parts in Hollywood for Meryl Streeps Over 60," is here and doesn't have the flu. Or does have the flu, and is here anyway. With Julia. Why aren't they live-blogging?
7:01 Amy Poehler manages to make the "How do you pronounce that name??" joke, but about Tom Hanks.
7:00 "Live from the star-filled ballroom of the international Beverly Hilton Hotel!...." Rock it, ladies!! Look at your big-ass hair, Tina!
6:55 Taylor Swift might be a nice person, but what is she going to do about that red-carpet facial expression? The one that hollers, "Boy am I impressive, at least. I won't blame you if you have a stroke. Not a good idea to look at me directly; use the lens."
6:54 You guys, I'm way behind on writing out predictions and stuff, so bear with me if I'm a little sluggish on that stuff during the telecast. I'll try to be quick, thorough, and zingy, just like Tina and Amy! You'll all be talking about me tomorrow at the office, I pledge to you.
6:52 Cate's back in the charcoal lace dress, twinkling in the sunlight, still insisting before she's even asked that yes, Woody Allen directs, and no, Blue Jasmine did not originate full-blown from her cerebrum. When Samantha Guthrie calls her character "Sympathetic and awful, at the same time," Cate says, "Just like me!!" NBC cuts directly from Cate Blanchett to Kate Beckinsale, because some huckster in the editing department is still trying to confuse those three people who are still confused.
6:50 Twice now Martha Stewart has tried to sell me in commercial breaks on some brand of cough drops that I guess she really likes? The hook of the ad is Martha saying, "You know me well enough to know that I don't really like to do ads," so we're automatically supposed to trust her. She's convinced me! This must have nothing to do with the fading of her empire, the whole house-arrest thing, and the possible need for new and slighly inelegant income streams. Not that I imagine she's clipping coupons. But still. Cough drops?
6:47 An ad for some movie called Winter's Tale, which looks like the boring parts of Gangs of New York folded into the flashback sequences of Saving Mr. Banks. Russell Crowe with almost no hair and Colin Farrell with too much of it. What could possibly be happening here? Does this movie have even one toe planted in the Shakespeare play? I feel confounded.
6:45 Usher is talking to Carson Daly while Orlando Bloom arrives. I can't wait to get that new Norah Jones CD, see what else is new on Napster, and vote for John Kerry!!
6:41 Derek has arrived and immediately observed that Samantha Guthrie is very statuesque; that she looks a little, shall we say, perked up by a chill in the Mammary Area; and that Matt Damon looks good in fetchingly combed gray hair. We also agree (and who wouldn't?) that Hayden Panettiere really oughta fire somebody over this hair. I still think she drew some kind of short straw at some actressing convention at midnight on Ventura, because how else to explain that someone always shows up in the post-surfing slickback?
6:39 In addition to my water and pills, I have also ordered a tilapia sandwich from Chicago's Cafecito, the (not really) official sponsor of this blog. That way, if I ever go above-and-beyond in the whining and carping department, you can tell me, "Just eat the fish, b****!" So, you know, use the Comments field as you see fit.
6:37 Julia Roberts looks beautiful and speaks articulately and humorously as ever about working with Meryl on August: Osage, but her real achievement is her Moebius Strip inversion of a famous Sharon Stone feat. She has managed to wear a button-down Oxford work shirt under a black (velvet?) Dolce & Gabbana gown. Even Sharon didn't think of that.
6:35 Has Rita Wilson technically won a prize yet for Superhuman Achievement in Peripheral Smiling? I don't think I've ever heard her say more than three words. Any of us who have been to our partners' work events know that this takes some real — RITA IS TALKING!!! She loved the end of Captain Phillips, too, just like the rest of us.
6:31 Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are talking about being slightly nervous, but I don't know why. All they have to do is match the stratospheric expectations set by their own superlative performance last year; find ways to make good jokes about slavery and Somali pirates; and squeeze in some good gags about comedies that aren't that funny and dramas that are sort of silly. And play to an entire room where almost every race could go any number of ways, which doubles or triples the number of knotted stomachs. So be stressed if you want to, ladies, but it just goes to show that some people will complain about anything.
6:30 Samantha Guthrie lets us know that the first red carpet was unfurled in 1821, so she basically sticks it to all those parents who think this is a worthless distraction on a school night.
6:28 Emma Thompson and Robert Redford being interviewed together. He doesn't look like he hears her very well. The link is that they were both despondently alone in their movies. He was literally, and she was creatively. (Though, in truth, I didn't even love her in Banks. Shhhhh!!!)
6:25 My Golden Globes supply kit: some water, some chapstick, the Siskel Film Center's February guide to Iranian film (many of which are probably nominated tonight), and a tiny bowl of Abilify capsules, in case 12 Years a Slave goes home empty-handed, or Alexander Payne suddenly wins a surprise gong for Special Career Achievement in Rigged-Up Banalities.
6:24 Cate Blanchett's chalkboard-gray lace dress does not look like an art installation, which will disappoint some of her fans, but she's utterly exquisite, scalp to shoe.
6:23 A tradition, literally centuries old, has just been demolished by allowing Miss Golden Globes, Sosie Bacon, to speak on camera. Now I know how Clara Bow's audience felt when suddenly she was just up there gabbing. Is nothing sacred?? Does no one invest anymore in purely decorous vapidity?
6:21 To update: Michael J. Fox had no idea he's been nominated 10 times, Edie Falco had no idea she's been nominated 10 times, and Julianna Margulies had no idea she's been nominated 11 times. So, their television careers are all going pretty well, but they're never going to get hired at The Wire or In Contention or Gurus of Gold, so that's gotta be keeping them awake.
6:20 Helen Mirren is in sequined sea-green. Reese Witherspoon is in a sequinless sheath dress of a not dissimilar color. Reese loses to Helen, which you can usually predict, but it's always rough to see the younger ladies get TKO'd like that. I wonder if she even knows yet.
6:19 Kerry Washington even prouder of her (biological) baby than Leonardo DiCaprio is of his (cinematic) baby, but he's making it into a race.
6:14 Jennifer Lawrence, in her first huge awards show as a celebrity of interplanetary proportions, seems about 12 times more nervous than I've ever seen her. I fear for that gal a little bit. I think she needs to hustle to whatever relaxation camp/Too Much Too Soon Sequester Center that Emma Stone has apparently founded.
6:13 First of what I hope will be several Lego Movie ads, which I can't wait to see. The 21 Jump Street guys could remake Milk Money and I'd sprint to it.
6:09 Zooey Deschanel, who confirms all of our suspicions by reporting that she "had a cookie for breakfast," is here in a kind of nude-peach two-piecer that's like a conservative, pulled-punch version of that Cate Blanchett ensemble that spurred half of the Film Experience team to finally get religion.
6:08 Rob Lowe, another nominee who didn't have the stones to come in costume as his nominated character. But if you looked 29 at age 50, I guess you come in character as yourself as often as possible.
6:06 I love that everyone's explaining Cecil B. DeMille recipient Woody Allen's inevitable absence as an issue of him being "shy." I'm counting on Diane Keaton, his proxy, to say in her inimitably candid way, "Woody didn't come because he, you know, I mean, you know he just, like, hates this absolute crap. Ha!"
6:04 Michael Douglas still swollen with Candelabra pride, and manages an artful pre-emption of any possible question about his personal life, by bringing up "how much has changed" and then swiftly moving on. Taylor Schilling is on an opposite corner of the carpet, sweetly giggly and wearing something pretty and rain-forest green that is not not a nightgown.
6:02 Amy Adams, gorgeous in what I now realize is two shades of red, looks totally fetching and gives lovely tributes to both American Hustle and Her. I suddenly wish she'd worn her Her hair (which is hard to say fast). Maybe she'll switch mid-ceremony? Beyoncé would do it.
6:00 Official arrivals special starts with Samantha Guthrie (fine), Matt Lauer (ARGH!!!), Carson Daly (flatline), and a fourth woman whose name I didn't catch, but she's automatically in second place, just for being excited that Michael Fassbender just walked by her. The voice-over intro confirms that there will be 300 celebrities here. I had no idea they parsed things so exactly. What happens to the 301st celebrity who shows up? Or what happens if they only have 298? Do they just let someone in off the waitlist? If so, will they admit who it was?
5:54 Joelle What's-Her-Name thinks Kerry Washington's pregnancy guarantees her the best possible time at the Golden Globes: "I mean, what could be better??" Because what I'd most want if I were an expecting woman would be to be stuck in a rigid banquet-hall chair for hours, unable to drink, while everyone else knocks back free prosecco and scuttles from table to table, worshiping each other. Maybe she can pass this off as just receiving people without budging. Regal, not trying too hard, etc.
5:51 Making a dubious choice of Taylor Swift's nominated tune over the audio from Michelle Dockery's red carpet interview. Again, nothing really wrong with the song—a lot of years have a lot of awful tunes, and even the feeblest of this year's are perfectly fine—but I think Swift can bank on staying nestled in her seat tonight.
5:48 Lots of fetching-looking men in tuxes: Burrell, Cranston, McConaughey in that short, gelled-up hairstyle I've never totally warmed to. Idris Elba proves he's in that category of men who can absolutely get away with an open-collared tux (and is it even navy blue?) and not look like he's lingered too long at some awful men's club, filthy-rich wedding, or stockbroker's bar. He just looks comfy.
5:45 A Bradley/Leo bromantic embrace. Given this choice, the camera person is following Leo, so I guess I'm just born in the wrong era or something. Then, this invisible person pans away from both of them to check out the docking SUV limos, even though no one's coming out of them. What's with the anti-Bradleyism? (He seems to have brought his mom again.)
5:43 Amy Adams is wearing the most chic, red-wine version of what her American Hustle character might plausibly have worn, though the tight updo kind of ruins our hopes for a wild disco weave.
5:40 Disturbed by some slight melodic overlap between U2's "Ordinary Love" and the theme music for the Lexus ad.
5:39 Megan Ellison is here in a barely modified tux, with a woman I don't recognize who's in a slightly more modified tux. So I'm going to consider that a piece of Very Likely Information about Megan Ellison that I didn't know.
5:38 Tina Fey's wearing a black dress with some kind of mulberry print that you just know some queen has already written off as misappropriated upholstery. Amy Poehler looks hot as heck in all black. Michael J. Fox, co-presiding over the First Wives Club with Chris O'Donnell, is thrilled to learn from Shaun Robinson that he's been nominated ten times now.
5:37 Chris O'Donnell, who always feels like a permanent mascot for 4H or the National Junior Honor Society, reminds you that basic decency has real virtues, even if they make for slightly boring carpet talk. Nice to see him hanging in there in the First Wives Club with wife Caroline, who was his date when he was nominated in 1992.
5:34 Joelle is talking to 23-year-old Margot Robbie, whose voice only makes her more eligible for some kind of Naomi Watts biopic, perhaps to be called Shattered Dreams. Laura Dern is sporting her full-on auburn mane from We Don't Live Here Anymore. Shaun Robinson speaks to Chiwetel Ejiofor, reminding everyone just like Robbie does that we almost never hear their actual voices.
5:33 Dave Karger is here to predict 12 Years, Hustle, Ejiofor, Blanchett, Adams or Streep (did he pick between them? I missed it), and DiCaprio for the biggest movie awards.
5:31 Speaking of batting averages, my sports-reporting brother just plugged this live-blog, and for that reason if for no other, I have to say nice things about the U2 track "Ordinary Love" from Mandela, which is a perfectly fine tune. If there weren't a bigger pop juggernaut as well as an irresistible novelty song in the mix, I'd be wondering about it as a possible win.
5:30 A woman from Entertainment Weekly is reminding us how hard the categories are to predict this year; she's emphasizing TV, but I think it's just as true in the movie races. I'm fully prepared to bat somewhere around .100.
5:27 I ran to grab beans and rice from the kitchen, and now Sara Gore is talking to two guys I don't recognize who will be presenting tonight. She wants to know who did more push-ups, to prepare? I don't get it. Sandbags are still slipping slimily from where they have been piled against the red carpet flood waters, and Mena Suvari just got washed down Santa Monica in a freak riptide. (By which I mean, I keep hearing about this deluge and literally can't see anything except a tiny spill of sudsy water.)
5:23 Listening now to Coldplay's "Atlas," a Best Original Song nominee from The Hunger Games that's a little anesthetic for my taste. But it's clear by now that I have a genetic mutation that makes me immune to all things Katniss, or Katniss-adjacent.
5:21 Audrina Patridge, destined to be "famous" as an unseen girl who got robbed in the best shot of The Bling Ring, is starring in such a bad sequence about a pre-telecast exercise class that NBC cuts immediately and permanently to split screen. Audrina is outshone by Zosia Mamet's sweet haircut and black-and-white print dress, which can't have been her aim.
5:20 Will Forte, who is always unimpeachably adorable despite starring in a movie I don't like (and giving a performance I don't really get), is candidly excited to be in a movie that people don't loathe.
5:19 Kevin Spacey, looking a little grayer but still distinguished, has arrived early on the red carpet despite a horrible mugging he endured in a cruisy gay public park on his way to the Beverly Hilton. "I know people have been binging on House of Cards" is probably a perfectly fair statement, but it still leaves something to be desired as poetry. Though Shaun's retort ("I love binge-watching Kevin Spacey!") is technically worse.
5:15 Sarah Hyland: "The Modern Family table is always a party if Sofia is there." I hope Jesse Tyler Ferguson scratches her face for that. Playfully, of course.
5:13 Wolf of Wall Street's Margot Robbie is here in an actual dress, so take that, typecasting! "Fashion expert" Jay Manuel, in some kind of slim black pant with purple floral lacquering, is shattering oddsmaking curves everywhere by opining that Jennifer Lawrence might wear Dior.
5:12 Joelle has just said to Aaron Eckhart, "Everybody always asks the women who they are wearing, but no one ever asks the men!" Actually, exactly that is what someone always says. You can tell Aaron Eckhart is about to play the rotting monster of Frankenstein because he has abs, a lean Dolce & Gabbana suit, and perfect blond five o'clock shadow.
5:09 Parenthood's Monica Potter, the Next Julia Roberts of 1998, looks lovely in a spangly top and long brown train, but nobody notices because Lupita Nyong'o has just arrived in a caped scarlet kimono. Proving she can look luminous in any color, any silhouette, any superhero accoutrement, she has already crushed the night. Your move, Squibb!
5:07 Hayden Panettiere is here in Tom Ford, and I'm just going to let you guess what two colors that means she's wearing. If you said black and white, you must be a maniac! She's this year's torch bearer for the slicked-back swimmer's hair-cum-Athenian helmet, à la Laura Linney at the 2004 Oscars, so I'm not surprised she got here early. Sneak inside, girl.
5:06 Sara Gore: "Kerry Washington is pregnant this year, so it's gonna be switched up a little bit!"
5:04 With the best of intentions, the pre-show gals have managed to suggest that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler had an incredibly rich year, care of starring in the genuinely awful Admission and both women losing their last bid at a Globe. It's clear they meant to say something more obviously... nice about Fey and Poehler, whom anyone with any sense is deeply anticipating.
5:00 Here we are! Shaun Robinson, with the stamina of a war journalist in a lapis sheath, is already! here! bringing us all the non-news about people who have not yet arrived! But Sara Gore is here with the wrenching story of a small flood of water on a patch of red carpet, and somebody called Joelle Garguilo is here to say that people are genuinely excited about Tina Fey's and Amy Poehler's return. I've got some real journalistic moxie to keep up with, but I've got caffeine, a list of predictions, and fistfuls of Abilify to help me out.
9:59 A barely-awake Johnny Depp did what needed to be done and bestowed upon 12 Years a Slave its rightful prize. I know I just said how much I love another nominee and how much I like a third one (Philomena and Rush feel like non-entities, especially the latter, and not only in awards terms.) Still, Slave feels to me like their unambiguous superior, even if you're treating creative achievement separately from thematic and contextual importance. I'm delighted for the team who got to accept the top prize, and thank goodness for Onstage MVP Sarah Paulson, feeding a nervous McQueen some necessary names, particularly Sean Bobbitt's and Dede Gardner's.
But I mentioned Atonement before, and as befell that so-called front-runner after the Globes, I'm worried that 12 Years comes out of the evening feeling like a loser even though it won. Oh, well. Makes the Oscar predicting game more interesting, I guess! And the prize will still sit on the right mantel.
9:56 BEST PICTURE (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: 12 Years a Slave, but Gravity is nearly as superb. Captain Phillips, while not on the same level as those two, is an easy contender to feel good about.
I'm Predicting: 12 Years a Slave, in an Atonement-esque situation of taking the top prize even after looking quite weak all night.
9:53 Anyway (sorry, for the see-sawing), I really liked Dallas Buyers Club and haven't felt too persuaded by any of the recent takedowns and ideological critiques of its standpoint and historical revisionism. But McConaughey and Leto have made it harder tonight to feel settled in my affection for the film, through their discomfiting representations of the movie and of themselves. Again, they weren't awful, exactly. But they whiffed on the opportunity to be more ambassadorial for the film, or to reassure anyone who feels uneasy with their involvements and perspectives, or the politics of the film. Didn't help that neither said "AIDS," "HIV," or anything less euphemistic than "all the Rayons"; I'm sure they spoke from the heart, but they seemed a little trapped in the kinds of cautious euphemisms and silences that their characters explicitly suffered under.
9:52 Okay, so Blanchett. I mean, don't get me wrong, she was totally poised and everything, and took inspiration from the HFPA and blended Comedy and Drama in a barely distinguishable combo. That was cool, but also made me a little dizzy; I might have preferred a speech that was more obviously silly or sincere. Anyway, it was definitely a post-vodka, late-in-the-evening toss-off. We have more to look forward to from future speeches. But she did say that Dianne Wiest was her all-time inspiration as an actress, and that is Everything. Please, newspaper editors, make that your headline.
9:50 Matthew McConaughey's speech isn't landing that well, partly because of McConaughey'isms, and partly because he's pitching it a little too hard. And he's sounding a little... unreconstructed. The 12 Years a Slave table is having an awfully hard time not looking dismayed by their total shutout so far.
9:48 BEST ACTOR (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: McConaughey, but much like Wilson Phillips, you won't see me cry (cry... cry...) if Ejiofor or maybe Redford pops up there.
I'm Predicting: And I'm thinking Redford might. I was thinking that even before 12 Years started striking out all night.
9:46 Cate extemporizes quite well. Pretty well. Honestly, it gets a little weird at times. But hold on, before I can say more.
9:45 BEST ACTRESS (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Cate Blanchett, but I bet I'm alone in the world in holding that sentiment. Specifically, I am rooting for her to say to her husband, as she did upon winning her Elizabeth Globe, "I'm so pleased to have met you!"
I'm Predicting: Cate Blanchett, but probably by a fraction of the vote. Or maybe on a technicality. Gosh, how's she gonna pull this off?
9:44 Leonardo DiCaprio comes out to an awful vagina joke from the weirdly flat Poehler and Fey, and then finishes his speech. Charming. Even more charming when he says "Filomania."
9:40 Jared Leto has seized his moment to approach Bono. I hope he didn't mince, or some famous auteur might think to cast him as someone gay, which he would of course obviously be totally fine with.
9:38 An American Hustle producer, only minimally paraphrased: "One of the great privileges of making movies is that we get to make movies... about... people." Brad and Jen (no not that Brad and Jen, get OVER it, people!!!) are way more entertained by whatever they're saying to each other than by their producer's slackjawed drawling.
9:37 BEST PICTURE (MUSICAL/COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Inside Llewyn Davis, which is weird, because again, it's hard to even articulate what I liked about it, or to quantify exactly how much.
I'm Predicting: Hustle seems like a safe bet.
9:35 Chris Hemsworth and the real Niki Lauda are here to introduce Rush. Lauda thinks the scripted stuff on the TelePromTer is a little hard on him. Rush is like the biggest possible also-ran tonight, but it did win The Derek Prize, because by far his most excited reaction was to seeing the star of Good bye, Lenin!, which he adores, suddenly show up on TV.
9:32 What's with these iPad ads that seem explicitly inspired by The Tree of Life? The montage, the moving cameras, the sunflares, the silent actors, the resplendent oceanography.
9:29 Reese Witherspoon walks out with an envelope, as though she's going to announce a prize, but then she gives an intro to the winless 12 Years a Slave. I don't get it. Did someone not show up? Is 12 Years not just struggling to win prizes but turning into such an afterthought that they forgot to assign a dedicated introducer? Did she not even have an envelope to begin with, and yet I hallucinated one? I might be entering that demented stage at the end of an evening. I think I know who I'll blame that on.
9:27 Do you see what happens?? Do you see what happens when I give DiCaprio an inch?? I barely gave even an inch, and he just plowed through the opening.
9:26 BEST ACTOR (MUSICAL/COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Oscar Isaac by a mile, even though I think they're all good. Yes, I even think DiCaprio's got good moments in Wolf of Wall Street, but don't press me on it or I'll retreat!
I'm Predicting: Dern, who hopefully will say something about baby Laura, but I bet Leo's a threat, too.
9:21 BEST TV COMEDY SERIES
I'm Rooting For: Girls, because I finally started watching and I'm hoping it stays great.
I'm Predicting: Brooklyn Nine Nine, because I think that HFPA will do that kingmaking thing they sometimes like to do with new shows.
'Twas as I foretold! The man I take to be the show runner gets off one good line about his two-and-a-half-year-old, "who is a nightmare," but otherwise has an air of desperation or of trying too hard. Which would not surprise me from a Sandberg ally. And whose brilliant idea was it to get that dizzy comedienne Uma Thurman to introduce this prize? Or Chris Evans, who seems to be edging into Christian Slater territory? I know some of you think I'm too hard on Uma, but Real Talk: does she ever not seem awkward in moments like this? Should she come anywhere near a comedy presentation? Drew Barrymore's in the audience! She's right there, with nothing to do!
9:20 How worried do I need to be about how sad around the mouth Ben Affleck is looking? I ask Garner-wise. Boy does that guy look busted. Not trying to start trouble. Sorry.
9:18 Even though I was a McQueen voter in my heart, I'm just so elated to hear an Alfonso Cuarón speech on an awards telecast. Just when I can barely contain the glee, he invokes "Chivo" Lubezki. And tells a great, campaign-friendly true story about telling Sandra Bullock he was going to give her herpes. (You had to be there. It was worth it.)
9:17 BEST DIRECTOR
I'm Rooting For: McQueen, barely over Cuarón.
I'm Predicting: Ditto. But is Russell a factor, too?
9:15 It's too hard to talk or even think about Neeson. He'd be getting the same press Nicolas Cage does, except he seems nice and not crazy, his movies make money, and also Because. The Because is so uncomfortable, but the career trajectory is just... Where's my tilapia sandwich.
9:14 Just supplied an important emendation to my post from 8:52. Doof. Wishful thinking re: Miyazaki.
9:12 Bradley Cooper is utilizing the commercial break to lay his palms on Ben Affleck's shoulders. My god, that guy moves fast! Please tell me in the comments if you, too, have been approached by a smiling Bradley Cooper during this telecast. I myself have not, which I cannot explain.
9:10 Keaton's singing. In something approaching a baby-girl voice. She sold that thing as well as one could; she seems to mean every word. But I'm sorry, it's just more interesting trying to decipher the more mixed-looking emotions on the faces of all these other women who've starred for Woody: Roberts, Barrymore, Wiest, Watts, Hemingway, and (predictably) Streep are all hard to read throughout this.
Paying tribute to someone's distinguished career directing actresses and writing female roles would normally be 1000% up my alley, and of course it is part of what I love about Allen's movies. But there's something discomfiting about singling this out so substantially as the virtue of his filmography. Feels somehow like special pleading, and to hazy ends.
9:09 WIEST IS HERE. WIEST IS HERE. WIEST IS HERE. WIEST IS HERE.
9:06 Everyone's been so freaking nervous all night that Diane Keaton, fully silver-haired, seems utterly relaxed. She takes the tribute straight to the strength of Allen's female characters, drawing a direct line from her own Annie to Cate in Jasmine. Hard, hard sell on the 179 actresses who have acted for Allen. Which, when you do the arithmetic doesn't seem like a ton for someone who's made 40 movies. And I'm not sure I can sign on to this bit about how none of these women's roles have ever overlapped at all. Let's ask Naomi Watts and Ellen Page and post-Husbands and Wives Judy Davis how they feel about that. But I quibble. (I know, I know, "Eat the fish, b***h.")
9:05 We're being sold a putrid, disgusting lie that he hasn't been repeating himself for decades. (Calm down, I'm only referring to the title fonts.)
9:04 Mariel Hemingway's in the audience, which is intriguing. Hollywood Ending's in the tribute montage, which is horrifying.
9:02 Emma Stone defies everything, everything I said before by turning out NOT to have slipped into a bank vault somewhere after her America's Sweetheartness got waaaaaay too much. Oh, I get it, that bank vault has involved starring in Woody Allen's next movie. Emma was still a molecule circa Crimes and Misdemeanors, but she gets to lead off this Cecil B. DeMille bit.
9:01 Tina Fey to Amy Poehler: "I love you, and there's a special place in hell for you." What does she mean?
8:56 Amy wins! She's getting a massage from Bono as she gets the good news, and celebrates it as most people would, by planting about three huge wet ones right on Bono. And then gives a speech that proves she's actually as nervous and vulnerable as everyone else, despite her stellar career of brilliant deflection. Way to go, Poehler! One day I'll watch an episode of your show!
8:55 BEST ACTRESS (TV COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Poehler, because come on!!!
I'm Predicting: I wonder if it's Dunham again, but can they just give it Amy? Hasn't she done enough?
8:54 Llewyn Davis clip reminds me of how fond I am of the movie, but also of how impossible it is to make it sound appealing to Derek, who's asking, and who's never liked a Coen Brothers movie.
8:52 BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
I'm Rooting For: The Wind Rises, though I love Frozen, too.* (Ed.: Yep, I said it. Yep, I blew it. The other nominees were The Croods and Despicable Me 2, not The Wind Rises.)
I'm Predicting: Frozen, though The Wind Rises is not impossible. Maybe it got extra points from that amazing Miyazaki joke in Jimmy Fallon's SNL? (Ed.: It bears repeating that I'm a doofus.)
I'm sitting next to someone who is feeling instantly smitten by supremely off-putting presenter Chris Pine, so now we're fighting. I'm too bewildered to pay almost any attention to the Frozen directors' speech.
8:49 TV ad for Enough Said on DVD, which'll have to do in the absence of Abilify ads (what is happening with that??). James Gandolfini's just so special in it. Even short glimpses fill the heart.
8:47 Douglas thanks Catherine, so that'll be a good for a paragraph in everyone's write-up. Maybe we could all devote that paragraph instead to Derek's perfectly good question about why they couldn't find one actually gay actor to play any of the main roles in Candelabra.
8:46 Thank you, Michael, for that joke about maybe mincing too much in Traffic, and thus inspiring Soderbergh with this casting idea.
8:45 Douglas. Apparently it's his fourth win, out of 11 nominations. He probably doesn't know that, either. Or maybe he does. He at least knows that he didn't act in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is more than the Globes announcer knows.
8:44 BEST ACTOR (TV MOVIE/MINISERIES)
I'm Rooting For: Elba or Ejiofor, out of general admiration, or Damon, for the same reason, even though I wasn't taken with him in Candelabra.
I'm Predicting: Douglas deserves to have written something down. Somewhere, a Welsh woman will be weeping.
8:43 Jimmy Fallon is trying to marionette Melissa McCarthy through an improv bit where Melissa McCarthy thinks she's Matt Damon. Belly flop, I'm sad to say.
8:42 It's The Great Beauty. The director: "Thank you to Italy, that's a crazy country, but a beautiful one." Did I get that right?
8:39 BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
I'm Rooting For: The Wind Rises, which is probably the only nominee that has no shot.
I'm Predicting: Blue Is the Warmest Color, probably, but I wouldn't be staggered by The Great Beauty or The Hunt or The Past. Should Blue have been released later? Wait, they've tricked me into thinking like an awards slut and not an art-for-art's-sake distributor!
Zoe Saldana's presenting with Orland Bloom (in a confusing profusion of blues), because she's the new Kristin Scott Thomas: the only actress anyone trusts to get all the non-English names, vowels, and phrases correct.
8:34 BEST ACTOR (TV COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: I don't have such a vested interest in this one, but I tend to like Jason Bateman?
I'm Predicting: Andy Samberg, because Seth Meyers is presenting.
This is what I was worried about. A Samberg speech that makes him look like the frattiest, luckiest improv-comedy troupe president there ever was. Meryl's already giggling by the time he's walking to the stage, so I guess there's that. Liev Schreiber thinks Samberg's semi-lampooning of the standard awards-speech template is so unfunny that he actually starts squirming. It's not bad, really, but I just tend to have Samberg allergies, unless he's doing a music video with Portman, Bolton, or Gaga. Otherwise? Spare. But I haven't seen the show, either, and maybe it's good.
8:33 Seth Meyers and Julie Bowen are willing to whore themselves to the HFPA to get a trophy. It's what they say, and they may or may not be kidding.
8:31 Laura Dern gets to introduce Nebraska, and pay sweet tribute to her dad and to Alexander Payne, whose first movie she starred in, as we know. If you're going to bring me around on Payne, you may as well scooch him next to Laura Dern, even verbally.
8:30 Jonze is the same cutie-patootie that he was when he presented Her here in Chicago about a month back. He's so charming and sincere and sweet that even Taylor Swift notices his existence. Emma and Spike are like a nuclear-fission experiment, cracking the Langean ice and smashing the Swiftian hauteur. Is the Nobel committee watching??
8:29 BEST SCREENPLAY
I'm Rooting For: I can't say I'm totally sold on any of these scripts, but I guess I'd say 12 Years a Slave if you look past some of the awkward dialogue. Runners-up would be American Hustle for the intricate architecture, even though Russell essentially directed against that architecture really paying off; and Her, which sometimes oversold its conceits but is still imaginative and interesting.
I'm Predicting: Her, because it calls the most attention to its own writing. And I'd admittedly love to see that sweetie-pie Spike Jonze give a speech.
8:28 Walks out with a two-olive martini and her Louboutins in her hand to present Best Screenplay. Even Jessica Lange laughs openly. Even Jessica Lange is charmed.
8:27 EMMA!!!!
8:20 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
I'm Rooting For: Cooper, but only barely over Abdi. I'd be thrilled for either of them, and perfectly happy with Leto.
I'm Predicting: Leto, especially since people on the red carpet kept cooing about Dallas Buyers. Maybe I'm underestimating McConaughey?
Leto wins, and his first few attempts at bro-y comedy land badly. Not just because they're not that funny but also, if you're asking me, because they read too much like a distancing device from the sensibility of the character he played. He does better when earnestly testifying to how good yet unexpected it feels to be so embraced for his first film performance in six years after "pursuing other dreams." Here, the camera people take a risk—I bet Colin Farrell identifies with winning a prize after seeming for so many years like a distracted weirdo dissolute!—but that doesn't pay off. Farrell looks crushed by ennui. Bradley Cooper is surely not rolling his eyes at Leto's victory, and yet, through the magic of quick-cut editing, he is interpolated to look as though he is rolling his eyes at Leto's victory.
8:16 BEST ACTRESS (TV DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Really any of them, but maybe Robin Wright, since she's been at this for so long, unrewarded.
I'm Predicting: That Tatiana Maslany, because it sure sounds like she brings down the house.
It's Wright, and boy does she sprint all the way down there. She sounds like she always sounds, kind of loopy but deeply thoughtful. "I'm not gonna go through the whole thing you've all heard a million times, thank you all!"
All of this, by the way, follows one of Fey's and Poehler's best bits, where Poehler pretended to be Fey's surly son from a previous marriage, hurling Hollywood-based vituperations at her actress mom: "I hate you, and Jacqueline Bisset hates you, too!" She then tries to identify her undisclosed father from the Globes audience, alighting quickly on Idris Elba or Harvey Weinstein.
8:07 BEST ACTRESS (MUSICAL/COMEDY)
I'm Rooting For: Amy Adams, in a narrow squeak over Meryl Streep.
I'm Predicting: Amy Adams, in a narrow squeak over Meryl Streep.
It's Amy!! It's so exciting to finally see her get out of a chair at one of these things. With misty eyes, she says, "I always cry when I'm not supposed to, and then when a director asks me to, I can't cry. It just sucks." The NBC watermark looks distractingly like a tattoo. She gives a very, very sweet tribute to the woman who took her on 15 years ago as a client. Or who cast her in her first role. Or who did something. Shit, I sort of missed it! I was taken up in pro-Amy joy. Thankfully, she ends her speech with a tribute to joy. (By the way, Downey: that opening bit was great at the 2010 ceremony, but as you suggested from the mic, you can't always count on a sequel to be great.)
8:05 Fun to watch with Derek, because you can say things like, "Did you know he's Angelina Jolie's father?" and he's like, "WHAT?? REALLY?!"
8:03 Voight! I would never have called that correctly, if the HFPA didn't seem like such a Voight-Jolie dominion, for more than a decade now. The room is really woopy about it! But not Colin Farrell. He lets out a really impressive sigh of boredom as Voight starts reciting the necessary beatitudes. The three Never Let Me Go-ish Interchangeables who presented the award are plugged into discreet sockets in the back, jacking up their battery supply so they don't get thrown onto the Unisex Ingenue Heap right behind the Hilton.
8:01 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (TV)
I'm Rooting For: Corey Stoll, on principle
I'm Predicting: Jon Voight, maybe?
7:54 Bono scoops it for "Ordinary Love," which means Taylor Swift is already writing a catchy tune about a greedy Irishman. The Edge says U2 has been working for President Mandela since the 70s: "It's taken us 25 years to write this song." The Globes producers cut to Hayden Panettiere, as anyone would. Chris Martin gets a shout-out from the stage, which will incense millions of people who fight on pop-music message boards. Julia Roberts looks more enchanted with Bono's mostly touching eulogy-cum-sales-pitch than Meryl Streep does.
7:52 BEST ORIGINAL SONG
I'm Rooting For: "Please Mr. Kennedy"
I'm Predicting: "Let It Go," which I think isn't that great, but I understand a phenom when I'm amidst one, and I'd at least be happy for Lopez.
7:49 BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
I'm Rooting For: 12 Years a Slave, because even if Zimmer's copying himself, he's copying great material that nobody rewarded when they should have, and he probably deserves a few more trophies than he's reaped.
I'm Predicting: Could it be the Mandela score? That's the sort of curveball this category used to throw at the Globes. I bet it's Slave or Gravity. Let's say Slave.
For some reason, it takes Kate Beckinsale, Sean Combs, and Usher together to announce this award. I hope we at least get a buddy comedy or a bank-heist thriller out of this. A slightly unkempt-looking but quickly charming Alex Ebert wins for All Is Lost, but has trouble making the words. He didn't need to, while he was giving his girlfriend a pretty deep lip-lock upon rising from his chair. His speech rides the thin line between eloquence and heezy-weezy abstraction. Best line, to writer-director J.C. Chandor: "Thanks for letting me try, all over your movie."
7:47 Steve Coogan here to introduce Philomena with the real Philomena Lee, looking magnificent in rich purple, if a bit overwhelmed. Addled editing crew cuts to Helen Mirren because Judi Dench doesn't seem to be there, and sometimes any Dame'll do. Future Dame Emma Thompson makes things easier by giving a beaming, one-woman standing ovation.
7:45 A Microsoft ad that baldly appropriates footage of Malala Yousafzai, Margaret Thatcher, disabled athletes, and Gabrielle Giffords as an implicit sales tactic for... new computers? Then a commercial narrated by John C. Reilly, which feels gratuitous.
7:43 Bradley Cooper
7:42 Yep, it's Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan thinks Aaron Paul will speak most eloquently for the whole crew, and what he gets in return is Paul hollering, "Yeah, bitch!" So... maybe there was another way to go.
7:41 BEST TV SERIES (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Masters of Sex, just because it's new and an inspired concept, or Breaking Bad, because it has kept some of my friends alive during various periods of midwinter despond.
I'm Predicting: Probably the same two shows, or maybe House of Cards? Becuase it was the final season, I'll say Bad.
7:40 Cranson thanks "his beautiful wife Robin" juuuuuuust in the nick of Stick Man time. He always seems like the nicest guy in the room.
7:37 BEST ACTOR (TV DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: Bryan Cranston, or maybe Michael Sheen
I'm Predicting: Bryan Cranston, who is like emperor of the world at this point.
Cranston runs up to fetch it from Aaron Eckhart and Paula Patton, the latter of whom is wearing a pretty and structurally complicated white dress that plays like a tribute to the Cloud City of Bespin, or maybe to the Ghost Orchid of the Everglades. Maybe to both.
7:35 Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie, here to intro The Wolf of Wall Street from a malfunctioning TelePromTer. Someone hands them scrap paper from the wings. It's yellow. It's got drivel on it. What's written on it is so bad that Robbie has to turn away, chuckling, and Hill deadpans it in order to save it. There are shots from the movie that repeat even in the space of a 45-second clip. Such visual riches, that movie.
7:34 Derek and I agree that Poehler and Fey aren't really landing tonight. Admittedly, it's hard, with the old gag of how unpronounceable the names of HFPA journalists are, and how dubious their publications. Still, Gwyneth Paltrow gets a bigger albeit unwitting laugh just by haughtily opening a water bottle. (It's probably not water.)
7:33 "Why do we care about men flinging themselves down the course of a luge? How is it that we put away our worldly differences for 18 days?" Um, we don't, and we don't? These Olympics ads ought to step back from the rhetorical questions.
7:28 Matt Damon's here to introduce Captain Phillips, according to the Greengrass Transitive Property. Kerry Washington looks extremely excited by someone just off screen: she pumps her fists at them, beams open-mouthed at them, shakes her hips at them, and sort of does a full-body dance-and-giggle at them, even while she's technically talking to someone else. WHO IS IT???? I badly, badly want it to be Emma Thompson.
7:25 BEST ACTRESS (TV MOVIE/MINISERIES)
I'm Rooting For: Jessica Lange, forever
I'm Predicting: Elisabeth Moss
It's Moss! A Jane Campion-themed speech is now inevitable!! Jessica Lange preserves her preternatural ability to look unimpressed, even by sweet tributes from winning nominees. Elisabeth seems adorable. She thanks "Jane" but never says "Campion," so I'm going through a difficult moment. It's helped a bit by her toast to the brilliant Australian d.p. Adam Arkapaw. I think I love the red, black, and silver metallic dress, though I'm not sure how to describe it, or... how to defend it? What to say about it? Whatever, thrilled for Moss. My Top of the Lake DVD gets here tomorrow!
7:22 BEST TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES
I'm Rooting For: Time to watch Coven, at least. No real preference.
I'm Predicting: Candelabra, even though I found it awkward and mostly unilluminating. But I guess I'm impressed that they at least got it made. And I loved Debbie Reynolds' look at her son when his slot machine turns out to have no money in it, even when she wins.
7:21 Mark Ruffalo, who seems ill-cast in the forthcoming The Normal Heart, and Naomi Watts, who seems ill-cast in anything that's apparently billed as a comedy.
7:16 This might be the single most alcohol-defined moment I've ever seen behind a dais at an awards show, complete with bleeped-out profanities and a lot of long pauses. Eventually she thanks everyone who ever gave her joy, and tells everyone who "gave her shit" to do what her mother always suggested to similar folks: "Go to hell, and don't come back!" Then recommends universal forgiveness as the world's best beauty treatment. Reverse shot of the audience reveals everyone's discomfort. Laura Dern, that sunbeam of maternal solicitude, looks the most actively worried for Bisset, but also like she might be giggling a bit. She stands out because everyone else is frozen in place. And also because of the hair.
7:13 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (TV)
I'm Rooting For: Janet McTeer
I'm Predicting: Monica Potter
But I'm already down to 1-out-of-2, because Jacqueline Bisset's just won for whatever Dancing on the Edge is. Even she seems floored. Her walk to the stage is as long as Jennifer Lawrence's speech was. Bisset is still ravishing. Her "speech" for the first 10 seconds is an homage to Anna Paquin's at the Oscars.
7:10 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
I'm Rooting For: Lupita Nyong'o
I'm Predicting: Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence still loves I Heart Huckabees, even if David O. Russell can't be bothered to. Also loves Spanking the Monkey and Three Kings, so we're feeling good about her. Why were Hanks and Bullock so subdued?
7:07 Fey: To star in Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey bravely lost 45 pounds, "or what actresses call 'being in a movie.'"
7:06 Now we've gone A+++ on George Clooney, "proving that he'd rather float away and die than spend one more minute in space with a woman his own age."
7:04 Tina and Amy nail their first A++ joke about that gross social climber Julia Louis-Dreyfus who is now sitting with the film people. She's spotted smoking an electronic cigarette and shoving Reese Witherspoon away when she tries to snap a selfie.
7:02 Meryl Streep, "proving there are still great parts in Hollywood for Meryl Streeps Over 60," is here and doesn't have the flu. Or does have the flu, and is here anyway. With Julia. Why aren't they live-blogging?
7:01 Amy Poehler manages to make the "How do you pronounce that name??" joke, but about Tom Hanks.
7:00 "Live from the star-filled ballroom of the international Beverly Hilton Hotel!...." Rock it, ladies!! Look at your big-ass hair, Tina!
6:55 Taylor Swift might be a nice person, but what is she going to do about that red-carpet facial expression? The one that hollers, "Boy am I impressive, at least. I won't blame you if you have a stroke. Not a good idea to look at me directly; use the lens."
6:54 You guys, I'm way behind on writing out predictions and stuff, so bear with me if I'm a little sluggish on that stuff during the telecast. I'll try to be quick, thorough, and zingy, just like Tina and Amy! You'll all be talking about me tomorrow at the office, I pledge to you.
6:52 Cate's back in the charcoal lace dress, twinkling in the sunlight, still insisting before she's even asked that yes, Woody Allen directs, and no, Blue Jasmine did not originate full-blown from her cerebrum. When Samantha Guthrie calls her character "Sympathetic and awful, at the same time," Cate says, "Just like me!!" NBC cuts directly from Cate Blanchett to Kate Beckinsale, because some huckster in the editing department is still trying to confuse those three people who are still confused.
6:50 Twice now Martha Stewart has tried to sell me in commercial breaks on some brand of cough drops that I guess she really likes? The hook of the ad is Martha saying, "You know me well enough to know that I don't really like to do ads," so we're automatically supposed to trust her. She's convinced me! This must have nothing to do with the fading of her empire, the whole house-arrest thing, and the possible need for new and slighly inelegant income streams. Not that I imagine she's clipping coupons. But still. Cough drops?
6:47 An ad for some movie called Winter's Tale, which looks like the boring parts of Gangs of New York folded into the flashback sequences of Saving Mr. Banks. Russell Crowe with almost no hair and Colin Farrell with too much of it. What could possibly be happening here? Does this movie have even one toe planted in the Shakespeare play? I feel confounded.
6:45 Usher is talking to Carson Daly while Orlando Bloom arrives. I can't wait to get that new Norah Jones CD, see what else is new on Napster, and vote for John Kerry!!
6:41 Derek has arrived and immediately observed that Samantha Guthrie is very statuesque; that she looks a little, shall we say, perked up by a chill in the Mammary Area; and that Matt Damon looks good in fetchingly combed gray hair. We also agree (and who wouldn't?) that Hayden Panettiere really oughta fire somebody over this hair. I still think she drew some kind of short straw at some actressing convention at midnight on Ventura, because how else to explain that someone always shows up in the post-surfing slickback?
6:39 In addition to my water and pills, I have also ordered a tilapia sandwich from Chicago's Cafecito, the (not really) official sponsor of this blog. That way, if I ever go above-and-beyond in the whining and carping department, you can tell me, "Just eat the fish, b****!" So, you know, use the Comments field as you see fit.
6:37 Julia Roberts looks beautiful and speaks articulately and humorously as ever about working with Meryl on August: Osage, but her real achievement is her Moebius Strip inversion of a famous Sharon Stone feat. She has managed to wear a button-down Oxford work shirt under a black (velvet?) Dolce & Gabbana gown. Even Sharon didn't think of that.
6:35 Has Rita Wilson technically won a prize yet for Superhuman Achievement in Peripheral Smiling? I don't think I've ever heard her say more than three words. Any of us who have been to our partners' work events know that this takes some real — RITA IS TALKING!!! She loved the end of Captain Phillips, too, just like the rest of us.
6:31 Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are talking about being slightly nervous, but I don't know why. All they have to do is match the stratospheric expectations set by their own superlative performance last year; find ways to make good jokes about slavery and Somali pirates; and squeeze in some good gags about comedies that aren't that funny and dramas that are sort of silly. And play to an entire room where almost every race could go any number of ways, which doubles or triples the number of knotted stomachs. So be stressed if you want to, ladies, but it just goes to show that some people will complain about anything.
6:30 Samantha Guthrie lets us know that the first red carpet was unfurled in 1821, so she basically sticks it to all those parents who think this is a worthless distraction on a school night.
6:28 Emma Thompson and Robert Redford being interviewed together. He doesn't look like he hears her very well. The link is that they were both despondently alone in their movies. He was literally, and she was creatively. (Though, in truth, I didn't even love her in Banks. Shhhhh!!!)
6:25 My Golden Globes supply kit: some water, some chapstick, the Siskel Film Center's February guide to Iranian film (many of which are probably nominated tonight), and a tiny bowl of Abilify capsules, in case 12 Years a Slave goes home empty-handed, or Alexander Payne suddenly wins a surprise gong for Special Career Achievement in Rigged-Up Banalities.
6:24 Cate Blanchett's chalkboard-gray lace dress does not look like an art installation, which will disappoint some of her fans, but she's utterly exquisite, scalp to shoe.
6:23 A tradition, literally centuries old, has just been demolished by allowing Miss Golden Globes, Sosie Bacon, to speak on camera. Now I know how Clara Bow's audience felt when suddenly she was just up there gabbing. Is nothing sacred?? Does no one invest anymore in purely decorous vapidity?
6:21 To update: Michael J. Fox had no idea he's been nominated 10 times, Edie Falco had no idea she's been nominated 10 times, and Julianna Margulies had no idea she's been nominated 11 times. So, their television careers are all going pretty well, but they're never going to get hired at The Wire or In Contention or Gurus of Gold, so that's gotta be keeping them awake.
6:20 Helen Mirren is in sequined sea-green. Reese Witherspoon is in a sequinless sheath dress of a not dissimilar color. Reese loses to Helen, which you can usually predict, but it's always rough to see the younger ladies get TKO'd like that. I wonder if she even knows yet.
6:19 Kerry Washington even prouder of her (biological) baby than Leonardo DiCaprio is of his (cinematic) baby, but he's making it into a race.
6:14 Jennifer Lawrence, in her first huge awards show as a celebrity of interplanetary proportions, seems about 12 times more nervous than I've ever seen her. I fear for that gal a little bit. I think she needs to hustle to whatever relaxation camp/Too Much Too Soon Sequester Center that Emma Stone has apparently founded.
6:13 First of what I hope will be several Lego Movie ads, which I can't wait to see. The 21 Jump Street guys could remake Milk Money and I'd sprint to it.
6:09 Zooey Deschanel, who confirms all of our suspicions by reporting that she "had a cookie for breakfast," is here in a kind of nude-peach two-piecer that's like a conservative, pulled-punch version of that Cate Blanchett ensemble that spurred half of the Film Experience team to finally get religion.
6:08 Rob Lowe, another nominee who didn't have the stones to come in costume as his nominated character. But if you looked 29 at age 50, I guess you come in character as yourself as often as possible.
6:06 I love that everyone's explaining Cecil B. DeMille recipient Woody Allen's inevitable absence as an issue of him being "shy." I'm counting on Diane Keaton, his proxy, to say in her inimitably candid way, "Woody didn't come because he, you know, I mean, you know he just, like, hates this absolute crap. Ha!"
6:04 Michael Douglas still swollen with Candelabra pride, and manages an artful pre-emption of any possible question about his personal life, by bringing up "how much has changed" and then swiftly moving on. Taylor Schilling is on an opposite corner of the carpet, sweetly giggly and wearing something pretty and rain-forest green that is not not a nightgown.
6:02 Amy Adams, gorgeous in what I now realize is two shades of red, looks totally fetching and gives lovely tributes to both American Hustle and Her. I suddenly wish she'd worn her Her hair (which is hard to say fast). Maybe she'll switch mid-ceremony? Beyoncé would do it.
6:00 Official arrivals special starts with Samantha Guthrie (fine), Matt Lauer (ARGH!!!), Carson Daly (flatline), and a fourth woman whose name I didn't catch, but she's automatically in second place, just for being excited that Michael Fassbender just walked by her. The voice-over intro confirms that there will be 300 celebrities here. I had no idea they parsed things so exactly. What happens to the 301st celebrity who shows up? Or what happens if they only have 298? Do they just let someone in off the waitlist? If so, will they admit who it was?
5:54 Joelle What's-Her-Name thinks Kerry Washington's pregnancy guarantees her the best possible time at the Golden Globes: "I mean, what could be better??" Because what I'd most want if I were an expecting woman would be to be stuck in a rigid banquet-hall chair for hours, unable to drink, while everyone else knocks back free prosecco and scuttles from table to table, worshiping each other. Maybe she can pass this off as just receiving people without budging. Regal, not trying too hard, etc.
5:51 Making a dubious choice of Taylor Swift's nominated tune over the audio from Michelle Dockery's red carpet interview. Again, nothing really wrong with the song—a lot of years have a lot of awful tunes, and even the feeblest of this year's are perfectly fine—but I think Swift can bank on staying nestled in her seat tonight.
5:48 Lots of fetching-looking men in tuxes: Burrell, Cranston, McConaughey in that short, gelled-up hairstyle I've never totally warmed to. Idris Elba proves he's in that category of men who can absolutely get away with an open-collared tux (and is it even navy blue?) and not look like he's lingered too long at some awful men's club, filthy-rich wedding, or stockbroker's bar. He just looks comfy.
5:45 A Bradley/Leo bromantic embrace. Given this choice, the camera person is following Leo, so I guess I'm just born in the wrong era or something. Then, this invisible person pans away from both of them to check out the docking SUV limos, even though no one's coming out of them. What's with the anti-Bradleyism? (He seems to have brought his mom again.)
5:43 Amy Adams is wearing the most chic, red-wine version of what her American Hustle character might plausibly have worn, though the tight updo kind of ruins our hopes for a wild disco weave.
5:40 Disturbed by some slight melodic overlap between U2's "Ordinary Love" and the theme music for the Lexus ad.
5:39 Megan Ellison is here in a barely modified tux, with a woman I don't recognize who's in a slightly more modified tux. So I'm going to consider that a piece of Very Likely Information about Megan Ellison that I didn't know.
5:38 Tina Fey's wearing a black dress with some kind of mulberry print that you just know some queen has already written off as misappropriated upholstery. Amy Poehler looks hot as heck in all black. Michael J. Fox, co-presiding over the First Wives Club with Chris O'Donnell, is thrilled to learn from Shaun Robinson that he's been nominated ten times now.
5:37 Chris O'Donnell, who always feels like a permanent mascot for 4H or the National Junior Honor Society, reminds you that basic decency has real virtues, even if they make for slightly boring carpet talk. Nice to see him hanging in there in the First Wives Club with wife Caroline, who was his date when he was nominated in 1992.
5:34 Joelle is talking to 23-year-old Margot Robbie, whose voice only makes her more eligible for some kind of Naomi Watts biopic, perhaps to be called Shattered Dreams. Laura Dern is sporting her full-on auburn mane from We Don't Live Here Anymore. Shaun Robinson speaks to Chiwetel Ejiofor, reminding everyone just like Robbie does that we almost never hear their actual voices.
5:33 Dave Karger is here to predict 12 Years, Hustle, Ejiofor, Blanchett, Adams or Streep (did he pick between them? I missed it), and DiCaprio for the biggest movie awards.
5:31 Speaking of batting averages, my sports-reporting brother just plugged this live-blog, and for that reason if for no other, I have to say nice things about the U2 track "Ordinary Love" from Mandela, which is a perfectly fine tune. If there weren't a bigger pop juggernaut as well as an irresistible novelty song in the mix, I'd be wondering about it as a possible win.
5:30 A woman from Entertainment Weekly is reminding us how hard the categories are to predict this year; she's emphasizing TV, but I think it's just as true in the movie races. I'm fully prepared to bat somewhere around .100.
5:27 I ran to grab beans and rice from the kitchen, and now Sara Gore is talking to two guys I don't recognize who will be presenting tonight. She wants to know who did more push-ups, to prepare? I don't get it. Sandbags are still slipping slimily from where they have been piled against the red carpet flood waters, and Mena Suvari just got washed down Santa Monica in a freak riptide. (By which I mean, I keep hearing about this deluge and literally can't see anything except a tiny spill of sudsy water.)
5:23 Listening now to Coldplay's "Atlas," a Best Original Song nominee from The Hunger Games that's a little anesthetic for my taste. But it's clear by now that I have a genetic mutation that makes me immune to all things Katniss, or Katniss-adjacent.
5:21 Audrina Patridge, destined to be "famous" as an unseen girl who got robbed in the best shot of The Bling Ring, is starring in such a bad sequence about a pre-telecast exercise class that NBC cuts immediately and permanently to split screen. Audrina is outshone by Zosia Mamet's sweet haircut and black-and-white print dress, which can't have been her aim.
5:20 Will Forte, who is always unimpeachably adorable despite starring in a movie I don't like (and giving a performance I don't really get), is candidly excited to be in a movie that people don't loathe.
5:19 Kevin Spacey, looking a little grayer but still distinguished, has arrived early on the red carpet despite a horrible mugging he endured in a cruisy gay public park on his way to the Beverly Hilton. "I know people have been binging on House of Cards" is probably a perfectly fair statement, but it still leaves something to be desired as poetry. Though Shaun's retort ("I love binge-watching Kevin Spacey!") is technically worse.
5:15 Sarah Hyland: "The Modern Family table is always a party if Sofia is there." I hope Jesse Tyler Ferguson scratches her face for that. Playfully, of course.
5:13 Wolf of Wall Street's Margot Robbie is here in an actual dress, so take that, typecasting! "Fashion expert" Jay Manuel, in some kind of slim black pant with purple floral lacquering, is shattering oddsmaking curves everywhere by opining that Jennifer Lawrence might wear Dior.
5:12 Joelle has just said to Aaron Eckhart, "Everybody always asks the women who they are wearing, but no one ever asks the men!" Actually, exactly that is what someone always says. You can tell Aaron Eckhart is about to play the rotting monster of Frankenstein because he has abs, a lean Dolce & Gabbana suit, and perfect blond five o'clock shadow.
5:09 Parenthood's Monica Potter, the Next Julia Roberts of 1998, looks lovely in a spangly top and long brown train, but nobody notices because Lupita Nyong'o has just arrived in a caped scarlet kimono. Proving she can look luminous in any color, any silhouette, any superhero accoutrement, she has already crushed the night. Your move, Squibb!
5:07 Hayden Panettiere is here in Tom Ford, and I'm just going to let you guess what two colors that means she's wearing. If you said black and white, you must be a maniac! She's this year's torch bearer for the slicked-back swimmer's hair-cum-Athenian helmet, à la Laura Linney at the 2004 Oscars, so I'm not surprised she got here early. Sneak inside, girl.
5:06 Sara Gore: "Kerry Washington is pregnant this year, so it's gonna be switched up a little bit!"
5:04 With the best of intentions, the pre-show gals have managed to suggest that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler had an incredibly rich year, care of starring in the genuinely awful Admission and both women losing their last bid at a Globe. It's clear they meant to say something more obviously... nice about Fey and Poehler, whom anyone with any sense is deeply anticipating.
5:00 Here we are! Shaun Robinson, with the stamina of a war journalist in a lapis sheath, is already! here! bringing us all the non-news about people who have not yet arrived! But Sara Gore is here with the wrenching story of a small flood of water on a patch of red carpet, and somebody called Joelle Garguilo is here to say that people are genuinely excited about Tina Fey's and Amy Poehler's return. I've got some real journalistic moxie to keep up with, but I've got caffeine, a list of predictions, and fistfuls of Abilify to help me out.
Labels: Awards 2013, Golden Globes, Liveblogging
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 5:00 PM
12 Comments:
Too mean about Admission (shoot me, I liked it!), but is it wrong that I'm more looking forward to Fey/Poehler than the actual results?
YES!!! I was hoping you would live blog!
Alas that I can't stay up and keep reading along -- but I'm definitely going to have sweet dreams in anticipation of continuing to read in the morning! I've been laughing out loud so far, you mad genius.
Much, much love for sharing that Iranian cinema booklet. So lovely.
Bisset will be mortified tomorrow but I had a good laugh.
It's nice to see Elisabeth Moss winning something.
What Dr. S said except that I can't sleep and miss the ceremony, and especially your brilliant comments.
If Cooper isn't gay, he must become gay if only to make your jokes (here and in that filmexperience podcast) even funnier.
CHECK-PLUS at 8:05 p.m. And love to you both.
(Also I am clearly more in James T's camp more than my previous comment (of an hour ago) would seem to suggest.)
Sad correction: The Wind Rises was not nominated for Animated Film.
:(
"I love you, and there's a special place in hell for you." What does she mean?
It's a reference to Taylor Swift who said that about Tina and Amy when they made a joke about her last year. I hope this proves to you that Taylor is a nice person. :p
The special place in hell quote is a reference to a Taylor Swift dig(in response to last year's Globes)
@Anonymous: Thanks for catching that!
@Rohit and @James T: Oh, god. I forgot about that whole nonsense. Thanks for reminding me, but also it was nice not remembering.
Thanks for doing a great job, once again.
And to Bradley Cooper: Thanks for nothing!
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