Hollywood’s award season kicks off Sunday at a very different Golden Globes, with a mainly virtual ceremony set to boost or dash the Oscars …
Hollywood’s award season kicks off Sunday at a very different Golden Globes, with a mainly virtual ceremony set to boost or dash the Oscars hopes of early frontrunners like « Nomadland » and « The Trial of the Chicago 7. » Usually a star-packed, laid-back party that draws Tinseltown’s biggest names to a Beverly Hills hotel ballroom, this pandemic edition will be broadcast from two scaled-down venues, with frontline and essential workers among the few in attendance. Deprived of its usual glamour, the Globes — which also honor the best in television — remain a coveted prize, and a high-profile source of momentum in the run-up to the season-crowning Oscars, which were pushed back this year to April. « Nomadland, » Chloe Zhao’s paean to a marginalized, older generation of Americans roaming the West in rundown vans, has long been viewed as a frontrunner for the Globes’ top prize. But it will face stiff competition from Aaron Sorkin’s « Chicago 7, » a courtroom drama about the city’s anti-war riots in 1968 with a mouth-watering ensemble cast including Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne and Sacha Baron Cohen. Both films are fueled by their timely themes of protest and joblessness. « I think that it’s likeliest between them, » said The Hollywood Reporter’s awards columnist Scott Feinberg. « And then the spoiler, if something were to come out of left field, would probably be ‘Promising Young Woman,’ which is just unlike anything else in recent memory. » Its star Carey Mulligan — playing a revenge-seeker who lurks at bars, feigning drunkenness to lure men into revealing their own misogyny — is tipped by many to win best actress. She will have to fend off Frances McDormand’s grounded and nuanced turn alongside a cast of non-actors in « Nomadland, » and Viola Davis’ portrayal of a legendary 1920s crooner in « Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
