We have just two days to put the Golden Globes to bed. I feel like this is still a very very wide open race. In the awards bubble, they can’t get behind a single Lincoln win, not even at the Critics Choice, while “out there” in the rest of America, Lincoln is tops. Everybody is talking about it except, of course, those who vote on awards. Funny, ain’t it? Usually that’s reserved to movies that are deemed too genre-y for Oscar but this year? It’s that talky political smart person’s movie dumb America wasn’t supposed to get.
Meanwhile, the upset over Argo and Zero Dark Thirty could also make this race turn out differently. If, say, either Ben Affleck or Kathryn Bigelow wins the DGA over Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee, that could signal a potential split vote scenario where Argo or Zero Dark Thirty wins Best Picture and someone else wins Best Director, like Michael Haneke or even Benh Zeitlin, or David O. Russell, for that matter.
Either way, that people were starting to lean Argo’s way (at least among critics and bloggers) we don’t yet know the ultimate outcome. The Oscars pulled the rug out from underneath the fairly predictable awards race and suddenly made it UNPREDICTABLE and that has made plenty of people angry. I don’t know how anyone can complain with such an interesting lineup for Best Director – yes, I know, we had the race set in stone already. We knew how it was supposed to go and then it went a different way. It hasn’t gone THIS way in a very very long time. Are the awards to confirm what we think or are they supposed to tell us what they think? I have never known to the answer to that one. One person’s masterpiece is another’s MEHsterpiece.
I will be putting down my predictions later. I know, try to contain your excitement! In the meantime, here you go.