Golden Globes Roundup! Memorable Moments from Hollywood’s Second-Most Glamorous Night

 

“LOOK, MAMA, I GOT A GOLDEN GLOBE!” PHOTO COURTESY OF NBC

The 68th Annual Golden Globes have come and gone, leaving a trail of glitz and Moët in their wake.  The surprises were few, the statues handed out many—all that remains is a yellow brick road with a red carpet strewn over it winding its way to that golden Mecca of all awards: Oscar.

Pundits have said for decades that the Golden Globes are a rehearsal for the Academy Awards. That theory went uncontested last night, as front-runners won their respective categories left and right, comedy and drama. The Social Network swept the major non-acting Drama categories, as it is likely to do come February, with wins in the Film, Screenplay, and Director categories.

Colin Firth won for Best Actor in a Drama. Melissa Leo and Christian Bale both took home statues for The Fighter, perhaps the most actorly of all the films this year. Leo gave the kind of acceptance speech that begets a picture, the actress beaming and a gold statuette raised in her right arm above her head. The kind that is accompanied by the words, “Look Mama… I got a Golden Globe!”—an exclamation that Leo shouted aloud on this very evening. In short, it is the very kind of speech that Natalie Portman or Annette Bening, both winners here, needed to give in order to secure a lead over the other going into the Oscar race. Instead, the Best Actress winners each gave heartfelt, yet ultimately elegant and restrained speeches. Fine and dandy—but let’s face it, voters want waterworks.

One of the best things about the Globes is that by separating films into comedy and drama, the awards allow great works otherwise unrecognized to take home some awards. Though this means we get some stinker nominees like Burlesque and The Tourist, we also got Lisa Cholodenko’s wonderful The Kids Are All Right winning the big prize for Comedy film, and deservedly so. It has little chance to beat The Social Network at the Oscars, but last night, they were both winners. Paul Giamatti won Best Actor in a Comedy for Barney’s Version, a film that has been otherwise overlooked during this awards season.

In the television categories, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association once again favored newish, buzzy shows, awarding statues to Boardwalk Empire and Steve Buscemi as well as to Glee and its MVPs Jane Lynch and Chris Colfer. This is the second year in which Glee took home a statue. While last year, its win was a delight, it’s something of a surprise that it took home a statue for 2010’s uneven episodes over stronger competition like Modern Family and 30 Rock. Speaking of which, it was just odd, unsettling even, to watch a television awards show in which the Tina Fey laugher and Mad Men went home empty-handed. Somewhere grand, Lorne Michaels and Matthew Weiner are crying.

Despite a few surprises like the best television actress awards for Laura Linney (who wasn’t at the ceremony, due to her father’s recent death) for the wonderful The Big C and Katey Segal for FX’s Sons of Anarchy, nearly everything last night went according to plan. As such, we’ll leave you with a few of our favorite little unexpected moments of the evening:

• Justin Bieber and True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld, among the youngest members of the audience, introducing the award for Best Animated Feature and proclaiming that “animated films are not just for kids,” that they can “thrill the kid in all of us.”

• In the pre-show, Carson Daly asked Angelina Jolie what she was looking forward to tonight. Her matter-of-fact response? “Oh, just seeing some friends,” as if it were just another night out at The Olive Garden.

• Host Ricky Gervais, in perhaps the rudest of all his jokes, quipped that the team behind Sex and the City 2 should win best special effects for airbrushing the poster.

• A near-cancer-defeating Michael Douglas got the entire audience of his peers on their feet in applause as he remarked, “There’s got to be an easier way to get a standing ovation.”

• Tilda Swinton, ice queen extraordinaire, said not once, but twice, “Tele-visual movie” and “Pillars of the uuurrrth.” In Tilda’s mouth, “Jennifer Love Hewitt: The Client List” has never sounded so elegant. She and Jeremy Irons need to present every award.

• Zac Efron also no longer has floppy hair and is thus a serious actor. Look at him read with gravitas: “ACTING. SCREENPLAY.”

• Aaron Sorkin made a clear attempt at trying to counter the attack that there are no strong female roles in The Social Network by mentioning Rooney Mara and the “elite” and “aspirational” female nominees in the room.

• And lastly, we’d like to thank Lea Michele’s over-emoting and hyper-dramatic facial expressions for being the MVP’s of the night. If only your quivering face was every reaction shot, well, we would be happy recappers.

Until the Oscars…