(READ: The full list of this year’s Golden Globe nominees)
12 Years a Slave and American Hustle (pictured), two early winners in the year-end prizes from film critics groups, lead the Globe parade with seven noms each — Slave for Best Drama, Hustle for Best Comedy or Musical — and can be considered favorites to triumph here, with the Slave steamroller seemingly unimpeded as it motors toward the Oscars. The HFPA, a faux-critics group of 90 journalists for foreign news-outlets whose daily job is not analyzing films but snagging interviews with the famous and notorious, doubles its awards fun by splitting the Best Picture entries into two categories of five films each. It does the same for leading Actors and Actors, making room for 20 finalists instead of the Motion Picture Academy’s 10.
The fine art comes in determining whether a movie is a laugher or a cryer. Slave, the hostage drama Captain Phillips, the space thriller Gravity and Ron Howard’s Formula 1 vehicle Rush are suitable finalists in Drama. But the fifth, Philomena, with Actress nominee Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, is in large part an opposites-attract comedy; you sob at the end.
(READ: Last year’s nominees for the Golden Globes movie awards)
In the Comedy or Musical category, the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (below) qualifies as a tune show with its bounty of folk songs. The other four — Hustle (which scored nominations for its four principal players), Spike Jonze’s her, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street — are not so much funny as funny-peculiar. The Jonze film, about a man (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with the voice of his computer’s operating system, may qualify as a romance with a smile on its sweet, sad face. The rest get a comic vibe from their frenetic or dyspeptic treatment of financial schemes. The real laughs are in the HPFA’s struggles to shoehorn 10 movies into these two overlapping categories.
The Globe nominations came a day after the Screen Actors Guild announced its shortlist, and the differences in the two groups’ choices are telling. SAG’s top five for Best Ensemble Cast — its rough equivalent to the Motion Picture Academy’s Best Picture — were Slave, Hustle, August: Osage County, Dallas Buyers Club and Lee Daniels’ The Butler. But only Slave and Hustle graced the HFPA Best Picture top 10. And The Butler, which SAG also cited for Best Actor Forest Whitaker and Best Supporting Actress Oprah Winfrey, was completely ignored by the HFPA. Today, June Squibb, the under-known actress who has a poignant few minutes on screen in Nebraska, can tell her friends, “I beat Oprah!”
If you’re keeping count by race, SAG gave five of its 20 nominations to black performers (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave, Whitaker and Winfrey for The Butler and Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips), while the HFPA reserved only four of its 30 (Ejiofor, Nyong’o, Abdi and Idris Elba for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom). Color quotas aside, Naomie Harris as Winnie Mandela in Long Walk to Freedom would have been a solid selection for either group. Both organizations ignored Fruitvale Station — a consensus winner in the real critics’ circles as best first feature — and its Oscar-winning supporting-actress candidate Octavia Spencer.
Redford, the only face on screen in All Is Lost, rebounded from his SAG snub to land in the Globes’ Dramatic Actor final five. The HFPA Comedy Actress category has an indie vibe, the finalists including Julie Delpy for Before Midnight, Greta Gerwig for Frances Ha and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss for Enough Said. Louis-Dreyfuss’s co-star James Gandolfini will not be joining her; he wasn’t nominated, and he’s dead.
(READ: Argo Thank Yourself at the 2013 Golden Globes)
The HFPA certified its abiding love for foreign actresses by naming an Australian (Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine) and three Englishwomen (Dench, Emma Thompson for Saving Mr. Banks and Kate Winslet for Labor Day) in the Actress/Drama category; Sandra Bullock in Gravity is the only American. Last year, Jessica Chastain was the one native-born finalist for Dramatic Actress, and she won. Bullock won’t; Blanchett will.
Down in the weeds, the three of the four major animation studios scored nominations in that category: Dreamworks for The Croods, Fox for Despicable Me 2 and Disney for Frozen. Disney’s more laureled sibling Pixar got stiffed: Monsters University was not cited. The HFPA also shunted the Disney release of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises into the Foreign-Language category, where its competition is four recent entries from the Cannes Film Festival: Blue Is the Warmest Color, The Great Beauty, The Hunt and The Past.
On January 12, few viewers will feel the suspense over whether a French, an Italian, a Danish, a Franco-Iranian or a Japanese picture wins the Foreign prize. They’ll be staring at all the stars poised to step on stage, and looking for George Clooney, who has inherited Jack Nicholson‘s mantle as the foxy pater familias. Clooney wasn’t nominated, but he’ll be at the Gravity table.
The list of movie finalists:
Best Motion Picture – Drama
12 Years A Slave
Captain Phillips
Gravity
Philomena
Rush
Best Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
American Hustle
her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
The Wolf of Wall Street
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Chiwetel Ejifor – 12 Years A Slave
Idris Elba – Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Tom Hanks – Captain Phillips
Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club
Robert Redford – All is Lost
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock – Gravity
Judi Dench – Philomena
Emma Thompson – Saving Mr. Banks
Kate Winslet – Labor Day
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
Amy Adams – American Hustle
Julie Delpy – Before Midnight
Greta Gerwig – Francis Ha
Julia Louis-Dreyfus – Enough Said
Meryl Streep – August: Osage County
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
Christian Bale – Amerian Hustle
Bruce Dern – Nebraska
Leonoardo DiCaprio – The Wolf of Wall Street
Oscar Isaac – Inside Llewyn Davis
Joaquin Phoenix – her
Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Sally Hawkins – Blue Jasmine
Jennifer Lawrence – American Hustle
Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years A Slave
Julia Roberts – August: Osage County
June Squibb – Nebraska
Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Barkhad Abdi – Captain Phillips
Daniel Brühl – Rush
Bradley Cooper – American Hustle
Michael Fassbender – 12 Years A Slave
Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club
Best Director – Motion Picture
Alfonso Cuaron – Gravity
Paul Greengrass – Captain Phillips
Steve McQueen – 12 Years A Slave
Alexander Payne – Nebraska
Russell – American Hustle
Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Spike Jonze – her
Bob Nelson – Nebraska
Jeff Pope and Steve Coogan – Philomena
John Ridley – 12 Years a Slave
Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell – American Hustle
Best Animated Feature Film
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Frozen
Best Foreign Language Film
Blue is the Warmest Color
The Great Beauty
The Hunt
The Past
The Wind Rises
Best Original Score – Motion Picture
Alex Ebert – All is Lost
Alex Heffes – Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Steven Price – Gravity
John WIlliams – The Book Thief
Hans Zimmer – 12 Years A Slave
Best Original Song – Motion Picture
“Atlas” by Coldplay – The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
“Let It Go” by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez – Frozen
“Ordinary Love” by U2 – Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
“Please Mr. Kennedy” by Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T-Bone Burnett, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen – Inside Llewyn Davis
“Sweeter than Fiction” by Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift – One Chance
(MORE: What You Need to Know: 2013 Golden Globe Nominations)