Shh. You'll wake up that monkey

So, are you happy with the big screen winners fêted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at this year's Golden Globe® Awards?

I enjoyed watching the pre-awards red carpet arrivals coverage again. It's fun to see movie stars in their unnatural habitat. It's fun to laugh or wince or gog at the bits of vague designer fashion some celebrities choose to wear. Her dress looks like a shower curtain. That one's so Trash '80s. A tuxedo is still considered evening wear, even in Los Angeles (fail).

What's funnier is that none of the televised commentary before or during or after the Golden Globe® Awards actually bothered to focus on - or question - the HFPA's choices. Where were all the resident network film critics and reviewers? Why weren't they there, ringside at the red carpet, all chomping at the bit to voice their opinions whether or not The Social Network deserved the best dramatic movie of 2010 nod? Was The Kids Are All Right truly a better Comedy or Musical (?!) than absolutely anything else released on the big screen last year? Really? There's total consensus? Worldwide? Really? Spooky.

Looking at the HFPA membership listed at its website (goldenglobes.org), none of the names stood out as recognizable to me. Are these film critics I've read or seen or heard? Nope. Doing a quick, totally unscientific Google search using a random handful of those names didn't result in much either. Outside the current trivial news about a lawsuit accusing the HFPA of accepting payola (how quaint), there's barely any useful info about this supposed iron-fisted star chamber of ex-pat stringers slumming it on Sunset Blvd.

goldenglobes.org

Many apparently believe a Golden Globe® Awards win can lead to Oscar gold. I'm not quite sure how the HFPA's relatively small membership of less than 100 could influence the hundreds of members of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the organization that runs the annual Academy Awards (oscars.org) and doles out the Oscars (oscar.go.com). The Golden Globe® Awards represent an arm of the media awarding the film industry. The Oscars represent the film industry awarding the film industry. Ditto for the SAG Awards, pretty much.

Perhaps the HFPA's influence - if any - on the voting decisions of AMPAS members comes from HFPA nominations being announced in December. The Screen Actors Guild also announced its SAG Awards noms in December (sagawards.org). This year, the Golden Globe® Awards aired live on Jan. 16, two days after the AMPAS nomination deadline had reportedly closed. AMPAS is due to announce its Oscar nominations on Jan. 25, and the 83rd Academy Awards air Feb. 27.

It's reasonable to speculate that a few AMPAS voting members would defer to the HFPA short list of nominees to decide what flicks merit Academy Award attention. The Ottawa Citizen's movie column used to go by the fairly refutable tag line, "We see all the movies so you don't have to." For any Academy voting member short on time, the math is easy enough when choosing between sitting through the four to six hundred movies released annually versus considering the HFPA's 70 nominations sporting lots of overlapping film titles.

Let's look at some HFPA, AMPAS and SAG Best Picture votes:

2009 Noms & Nods
HFPA Best Picture, Drama: AVATAR, The Hurt Locker, Inglorious Basterds, Precious, Up In The Air
AMPAS Best Picture: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, THE HURT LOCKER, Inglorious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up In The Air
SAG Best Picture: An Education, The Hurt Locker, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, Nine, Precious

2008 Noms & Nods
HFPA Best Picture, Drama: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Revolutionary Road, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
AMPAS Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
SAG Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Doubt, Frost/Nixon, Milk, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

2007 Noms & Nods
HFPA Best Picture, Drama: American Gangster, ATONEMENT, Eastern Promises, The Great Debaters, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood
AMPAS Best Picture: Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, There Will Be Blood
SAG Best Picture: 3:10 To Yuma, American Gangster, Hairspray, Into The Wild, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

2006 Noms & Nods
HFPA Best Picture, Drama: BABEL, Bobby, The Departed, Little Children, The Queen
AMPAS Best Picture: Babel, THE DEPARTED, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen
SAG Best Picture: Babel, Bobby, The Departed, Dreamgirls, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

Take a second look at that list, if you don't notice the similarities. It's pretty funny.

sagawards.org

It's pretty much been my opinion for a while that if you want a sense of which actors or what movies are liked by known foreign press film critics - what ever 'foreign press' might mean to you - then subscribe to the various media outlets they individually work for. Most probably crank out an annual Top Ten or Best Picks column to appease their content-hungry editors and blog readers, I imagine.

Beyond that, it's sometimes interesting to check out what members of the International Federation of Film Critics (fipresci.org) pick as their top flick. This year, The Ghost Writer directed by Roman Polanski won FIPRESCI's Best Film of the Year. The White Ribbon won last year. No consensus there. Finally.

fipresci.org

The FIPRESCI roster of affiliate organizations worldwide includes two from Canada: l'Association Québécoise des Critiques de Cinéma (aqcc.ca) founded in 1973, and the Toronto Film Critics Association (torontofilmcritics.com) begun in 1997. The AQCC hasn't yet released its awarded picks for this year, but the TFCA's faves of 2010 were made public earlier this month - before the Golden Globe® Awards aired:

TFCA Best Picture: The Social Network
TFCA Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network
TFCA Best Actor: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
TFCA Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
TFCA Rogers Best Canadian Film Award: Incendies

The TFCA's nod for Best Picture of 2009 was a tie between Hunger and Inglourious Basterds, with Polytechnique winning the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award. La Donation won the AQCC's Prix du long métrage québécois last year.

aqcc.ca

Canada doesn't have a Golden Globe® Awards. Possibly the closest thing to that would be the glamour and hype of the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) or Montréal's le Festival des Films du Monde (FFM). TIFF (tiff.net) was founded in 1976, a year before the FFM (ffm-montreal.org), and both September events offer publicly voted awards and a FIPRESCI prize. VIFF (viff.org) began in 1982 and also features publicly voted awards during its annual run in October. Additionally, VIFF and FFM are juried film festivals.

In 2010, Incendies won Best Canadian Feature and Wasteland won the Rogers People’s Choice Award at VIFF. Dalla vita in poi won FFM's Special Grand Prix of the jury, and Parajos de papel tied with Das lied in mir for that festival's most popular film as voted by the public. The King's Speech won the Cadillac People's Choice Award at TIFF. 

Yes there are other film festivals in Canada. A big bunch of 'em. Lots. yup.

ffm-montreal.org

"The Canadian Film Awards (CFA), which were awarded from 1949 to 1978, were initiated by the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE), to honour distinguished Canadian films (...) The first presentation was 27 April 1949 at the Little Elgin Theatre in Ottawa, with Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent in attendance." - thecanadianencyclopedia.com

The CFA would eventually become the Genie Awards (genieawards.ca), organized annually by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (ACCT). This year's Genie nominations are expected to be announced in February, and it's anyone's guess if the Genie Awards ceremony slated a month later will be televised or webcast or just quietly, anonymously posted on a Government of Canada-funded YouTube knock-off. Sadly, to compare the Genie Awards to the Academy Awards would be naively optimistic at best - except to humbly point out that both are self-awarding film industry organizations.

genieawards.ca

To be fair, the Genie Awards primarily celebrate Canadian-made movies. If American or other foreign movies are cited, it's normally because those movies included location shots produced someplace, somewhere, somehow in Canada. That said, the "four to six hundred movies released annually" equation mentioned earlier isn't an issue in Genie world. If all a voting ACCT member is voting on are twelve months' worth of Canadian-made movies, the HFPA's short list of 70 Golden Globe Awards® nominations - with its lots of overlap - is still likely a heavy burden by comparison. I'm not knocking Canadian films, there simply aren't many made annually compared to the amount cranked out by the States - fewer still that are recognized or seen by the average movie fan - unless a Canadian-made movie garners attention by HFPA or AMPAS, or the films attract loads of territorial support, such as French Canadian films screened in Québec.

In the spirit of comparison and idle curiosity, let's take a look at a Canadian version of the list I did earlier:

2010 Nods
TFCA Best Picture: The Social Network
FFM Special Grand Prix of the jury: Dalla vita in poi
TIFF People's Choice: The King’s Speech
VIFF People’s Choice: Waste Land
ACCT Best Picture: Polytechnique

2009 Nods
TFCA Best Picture (tie): Hunger / Inglourious Basterds
FFM Special Grand Prix of the jurys: Weaving Girl
TIFF People's Choice: Precious
VIFF People’s Choice: Soundtrack for a Revolution
ACCT Best Picture: Passchendaele

2008 Nods
TFCA Best Picture: Wendy and Lucy
FFM Special Grand Prix of the jury: The Necessities of Life
TIFF People's Choice: Slumdog Millionaire
VIFF People’s Choice: Il y a longtemps que je t’aime
ACCT Best Picture: Away From Her

2007 Nods
TFCA Best Picture: No Country for Old Men
FFM Special Grand Prix of the jury: Noodle
TIFF People's Choice: Eastern Promises
VIFF People’s Choice: Persepolis
ACCT Best Picture: Bon Cop, Bad Cop


Thanks for checking in.