2011 wasn't a bad year for movies. Let me put it another way: 2011 was a very good year for movies. But whatever's happened in the last 10 or 11 months is now almost completely beside the point. We're in that time of year when it starts raining prizes on films that haven't been in theaters long enough to actually be seen. The nominees for the 69th Golden Globes were announced this morning, and, more than ever, you really have to wonder who, over there, is in charge.
The Golden Globe Nominations
"The Artist," a black-and-white silent comedy from France about a washed-up film star, continued its march toward the top of the Oscar pile, with 6 nominations. It opens in Boston next week.
The films with the next highest tally, with five apiece, were "The Help," about black maids and their white employers in 1960s Mississippi, and "The Descendants," a father-daughter comedy directed by Alexander Payne and starring George Clooney. If there was a surprise, it was the attention paid to Clooney's "The Ides of March," a decently made, overly righteous political-campaign thriller that never really caught on with critics or the public. It got four nominations including one for Clooney's directing and another for its star, Ryan Gosling, who's nominated in the Globes's comedy or musical category for "Crazy, Stupid, Love."
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association oversees the Golden Globes, and it never does any good bemoaning its omissions. But this must be an especially annoying day for Scott Rudin who produced two very high-profile, seemingly Oscar-bound films -- David Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and the 9/11 prestige weepie "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," neither of which is playing yet and only one of which was nominated for anything: Rooney Mara, of "Dragon Tattoo," for actress in a drama and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for that movie's score.
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