I’m going to come right out of the gate and say this: I thought tonight’s Golden Globes were crap. Not because there was no awards ceremony. That I actually dug. I’m all for getting the entire thing over in under an hour. Can the acceptance speeches, forget the musical performances and simply read off the names; get it out of the way and let us all settle in for some American Gladiators. Brilliant. I’d rather watch roided out Helga punch someone in the head than have to sit through another evening of celebrity I hate the president haiku.
No, I wound up fed up with the Globes for two reasons. First, I hated NBC’s broadcast. I know, the Golden Globes aren’t really to blame for that and yes I realize NBC probably threw the whole hour together at absolutely the last minute. But it was a disaster. If there was one unifying theme to NBC’s telecast it was this: People who know nothing pretending they know something. Rather than simply announce the award winners, NBC chose to announce them, and then let whoever happened to be in the studio comment on them. Unfortunately, they neglected to have anyone on hand who’d actually seen any of the films in question and so we’re left with an obviously clueless Billy Bush telling us why he’s disappointed that the Hollywood Foreign Press let Cate Blanchett win, instead of Shrek… or whoever it was that he wanted… an opinion which judging from his dead expression was based entirely on which one of the five movies in question he’d actually seen. You’d think they could at least make up for their lack of expertise with accuracy in announcing the winners, but NBC couldn’t manage even that much. They skipped over at least 5 categories entirely. Most notably among the skipped winners was the GG’s screenplay award. NBC’s way of sticking it to the writers?
NBC’s dog and pony show broadcast aside, the winners sucked. I’m sorry, they did. Read through the list of winners again here. Except for Daniel Day-Lewis and the Coen’s, it’s a litany of overrated, overhyped mediocrity. I still don’t understand what’s so great about Atonment, and Sweeney Todd is nice enough, but seems to get undeserved bonus points just because Johnny Depp has funny hair in it.. I guess I should just be happy that unbearable borefest Michael Clayton stayed winless. What did win was anything that didn’t involve Americans. It is the Hollywood Foreign Press after all, so I suppose you have to expect some homerism. But I’m a homer too, and I like to see a little bit of red, white, and blue in my awards giving. Johnny Depp it seems, was as close to American as this year’s Globes were willing to get, and these days isn’t he really less American than he is French? Just look at his hats.
But I’ve gone on long enough about what I thought of this year’s Golden Globes awarding. What I’m interested in is what you thought of it. You can tell me, by casting your votes below in the following CB polls. Make yourself heard, and tell us what you thought of the 2008 Golden Globes fiasco:
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