Most recently epitomized by The Aviator's victory for Best Picture however many years ago, the Golden Globes have repeatedly reinforced in the eyes of the critical populace its image as a booze-fueled hand-job for Hollywood that serves as the shaggy-haired roadie one has to get through to make it to the Academy Awards. The most valuable barometer to use to predict whom the Hollywood Foreign Press will choose as its winners is the institution's obsession with the "golden age of Hollywood." It's "Inside the Beltway" politics for the Holiday Hills resulting in a pretty alienating experience for the rest of us. Except when stars get drunk, jokes get crass and the pomp and circumstance of the Oscars is eschewed instead for an atmosphere reminiscent of a French Pot Luck - you can almost smell the smoke and feel the sticky heat of George Clooney's gin sweats through the television.
The HFPA's obsession with all things, well, Hollywood as well as the Golden Globes' role as a prelude to the Oscars, make the Hollywood Foreign Press' film picks inherently political and a little too up-it's-own-butt. It's TV picks, however, are usually more deserving than the Emmy's, caught up in its own degree of self-importance, and serve as the strongest statement of the year of what's been the best in TV Land in the past year (See Mary Louise Parker's win for Weeds in 2006 and her subsequent loss to a Seinfeld Curse Breaker at the Emmy's that same year).
So without further stream of consciousness verbosity, my Golden Globe TV picks for 2007.
Best Television Series - Drama
24 (FOX)
Real Time Productions/Imagine Television/Twentieth Century Fox Television; FOX
Big Love (HBO)
Anima Sola/Playtone Productions/HBO Entertainment; HBO
Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC
Heroes (NBC)
NBC Universal Television Studio/Tailwind Productions; NBC
Lost (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC
Why: Last year's winner, Lost, fell off in the middle of season 2 and has suffered serious momentum challenges by its extended hiatus schedule and fan reactions to too few sequential new episodes. Grey's Anatomy developed into a true blockbuster series during its second season with an enormous post-Super Bowl episode that literally exploded the show out of the shadow of its Desperate Housewives lead-in. Season 2 gave no less than 3 memorable episodes that delivered the suspense of mid-90's ER and the emotional drama of a great evening soap. It's irreverent attitude and impetuous sexiness forged a new voice in prime-time TV that resonated with an audience no show has found since HBO's Sex and the City. Big competition from FOX's 24, however, which beat out Grey's for the Best Drama Emmy in '06.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
Patricia Arquette – Medium (NBC)
Edie Falco – The Sopranos (HBO)
Evangeline Lilly – Lost (ABC)
Ellen Pompeo – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Kyra Sedgwick – The Closer (TNT)
Why: I've never seen The Closer but all those reviews make it sound like Kyra Sedgwick's southern accent makes Matthew Mcgonnagay sound like he's from Hoboken. Don't be surprised by a win for Edie Falco, though, for a Sopranos farewell, and there's always that whole HBO lobby...
Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
Patrick Dempsey – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Michael C. Hall – Dexter (SHOWTIME)
Hugh Laurie – House (FOX)
Bill Paxton – Big Love (HBO)
Kiefer Sutherland – 24 (FOX)
Why: Laurie won last year. Kiefer won the Emmy. Dempsey's character doesn't demand enough range. Michael C. Hall's the shit. And kinda so is Showtime.
Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy
Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC
Entourage (HBO)
Leverage/Closest to the Hole/HBO Entertainment; HBO
The Office (NBC)
Deedle Dee Productions/Reveille/NBC Universal Television Studio; NBC
Ugly Betty (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC
Weeds (SHOWTIME)
Showtime/Lionsgate Television/Tilted Productions, Inc.; SHOWTIME
Why: Not even nominated last year, The Office could follow up its '06 Emmy win with this year's Golden Globe. Midway through season 2, however, The (American) Office made it very clear that when not adapting story lines from the British original it mired itself in overwrought plot and excessive pop culture references so thin they date themselves during the time between production and broadcast (Lazy Scranton?). Last year's winner, Desperate Housewives, is a critical non-entity this year serving as the osteoperatic backbone for ABC's flaccid Sunday lineup. Showtime's Weeds, on the other hand, rose to a new level in its second season, sharpening its banter and executing a smart, well-developed story that was both hilarious and surprisingly touching. Oh, and did I mention Showtime's the shit?
Best Performance By an Actress in a Series - Musical or Comedy
Marcia Cross – Desperate Housewives (ABC)
America Ferrera – Ugly Betty (ABC)
Felicity Huffman – Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus – The New Adventures Of Old Christine (CBS)
Mary-Louise Parker – Weeds (SHOWTIME)
Why: I can't watch the show but everyone seems to love American Ferrera, and I have to admit, it would feel kind of warm in the chest if a fat, little dark girl won an award. Also, MLP won last year yet JLD took home the Emmy. Why should the HFPA pick sides between the two when it can reward someone young and new and also say fuck you to two white chicks that, in the end, kinda look the same but aren't cumulatively hotter than Sigourney Weaver's Key Master in Ghostbusters 1?
Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy
Alec Baldwin – 30 Rock (NBC)
Zach Braff – Scrubs (NBC)
Steve Carell – The Office (NBC)
Jason Lee – My Name Is Earl (NBC)
Tony Shalhoub – Monk (USA)
Why: Duh. I mean Carell's acceptance speech was funny enough last year for NBC to use it as a promo for this year's airing, but Baldwin? C'mon. And Tony Shalhoub has been consistently condescending in his speeches toward those he's beaten like six times, so Baldwin? Duh.
Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV
Bleak House (PBS)
Masterpiece Theatre/BBC/WGBH Boston/Deep Indigo; PBS
Broken Trail (AMC)
Butchers Run Films/Once Upon a Time Films/Sony Pictures Television; AMC
Elizabeth I (HBO)
Company Pictures/channel 4/HBO Films; HBO
Mrs. Harris (HBO)
Killer Films/Number 9 Films/John Wells Productions/HBO Films; HBO
Prime Suspect: The Final Act (PBS)
Masterpiece Theatre/Granada/WGBH Boston; PBS
Why: Yeah, I know it's risky to bet against anything backed by Killer Films, John Wells and HBO, but everyone's been sweating the PBS adaptation of Dickens without having sat through it so why can't I?
Best Performance By an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV
Gillian Anderson – Bleak House (PBS)
Annette Bening – Mrs. Harris (HBO)
Helen Mirren – Elizabeth I (HBO)
Helen Mirren – Prime Suspect: The Final Act (PBS)
Sophie Okonedo – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)
Why: Let Helen Mirren win for The Queen. Annette's got her nom for Running With Scissors. And Gillian's just always been awesome from The X-Files to The House of Mirth to, apparently, PBS' Bleak House.
Best Performance By an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV
André Braugher – Thief (FX)
Robert Duvall – Broken Trail (AMC)
Michael Ealy – Sleeper Cell: American Terror (SHOWTIME)
Chiwetel Ejiofor – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)
Ben Kingsley – Mrs. Harris (HBO)
Bill Nighy – Gideon's Daughter (BBC)
Matthew Perry – The Ron Clark Story (TNT)
Why: It's been Bill Nighy's millennium, but he couldn't bring the Globe home last year for The Girl in the Cafe, which means a) he's out this year b) Ejiofor's out as well since HBO doesn't seem to be too favored and c) FX had the balls to re-brand a canceled show as a mini-series and that deserves the pilfering of some serious hardware.
Best Supporting Actress in ANYTHING on TV
Emily Blunt – Gideon's Daughter (BBC)
Toni Collette – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)
Katherine Heigl – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Sarah Paulson – Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (NBC)
Elizabeth Perkins – Weeds (SHOWTIME)
Why: Sandra Oh won it last year for Grey's, somewhat deservedly, but Heigl's emotional basket case, Izzie, was more difficult to watch than Isiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey on Oprah. Perkins' Celia Hodes character in Weeds, however, develops her own strong storyline in season 2 that Perkins plays with a wry disgust that somehow becomes fragile and endearing.
Best Supporting Actor
Thomas Haden Church – Broken Trail (AMC)
Jeremy Irons – Elizabeth I (HBO)
Justin Kirk – Weeds (SHOWTIME)
Masi Oka – Heroes (NBC)
Jeremy Piven – Entourage (HBO)
Why: Justin Kirk's character in Weeds is hilarious and is dating Kate Walsh. Jeremy Piven's character in Entourage is brilliant but he's fighting with John Cusack. Piven won the Emmy, but he also wore an ascot. Kirk is every much an "actor's actor" as piven but may, in real life, actually have a sense of humor, which Piven, obvious to anyone who saw his MTV sponsored trip to India, may actually lack.
4 comments:
look man, i am not about to tout your predictive abilities. i think the entire purpose of a blog is so you can stroke your own fat one for e'ryone on the internets to see. but fine, nice work picking grey's anatomy.
on a different note, where were you on laurie? no matter how many times that dude wins, a british guy passing himself off as not only amurrrican, but from the gd jerz is going to make them hollywood types bow down in some sort of reverse-imperialism knee-jerk, followed by a why-are-all-our-british-accents-so-bad-especially-you-madonna???
the dude had it in the bag.
a surprisingly articulate critique from someone with a mouthfullaballz.
in response, yes, you are right. my blind fealty to Showtime Networks, or "the next FX," clearly clouded my judgment.
unfortunately, i don't know enough about the ven intersection of English actors and the gd jerz so i can't really refute your claim. so in the bag perhaps he had it, along with some of those ballz.
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The best things come in small packages.
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