SALON

Monday, Jan 12, 2009 8:29 PM UTC

Mickey, “Slumdog,” Winslet and the Woodman

Indies and Brits -- or at least Kate Winslet and "Slumdog Millionaire" -- dominate the Golden Globes. Plus: Mickey Rourke's face explained, via cryptic asides.

By

Topics: Beyond the Multiplex, Golden Globes, Movies,

Mickey,

© HFPA

Kate Winslet, left, and Danny Boyle at the 2009 Golden Globe Awards.

Aren’t you delighted that the Golden Globes are back? Didn’t you miss them? Wait — you’re not really telling me you didn’t notice they were gone?

Yes, the annual self-serving, star-studded awards extravaganza hosted by a moderately dubious organization called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (some of whose members are actually foreign, and actually members of the press) returned to the small screen last night after a one-year hiatus. Last year’s Globes ceremony was washed out by the Writers’ Guild strike, and a number of wags have since suggested that some Hollywood union or other had better stage a brief work stoppage every January, just to keep this largely meaningless methadone-for-Oscar-addicts off the airwaves.

Of course, to call the Globes meaningless is to suggest that the Academy Awards themselves are meaningful, and I’m sure Socrates or Aristotle had a word to describe that form of logical fallacy. As is customary, this year’s Globes provided a potentially illuminating, potentially deceptive snapshot of how the Oscar race is progressing. This year that means two things, neither of them surprising in itself but taken together a potential bummer for producers and advertisers on the Feb. 22 Oscar broadcast: 1) The major films in the Oscar derby are once again indies or pseudo-indies that (by Hollywood standards) few viewers have seen; and 2) Hollywood’s latest wave of British invasion has reached critical mass.

Then again, the Brit-conquest of 2009 reflects two separate and unrelated phenomena: the unexpected success of Danny Boyle’s faux-Bollywood love story “Slumdog Millionaire,” and the sudden ascension of Kate Winslet as the classy-but-sexy, sexy-but-classy upmarket star of her generation. After winning four Globes, including best picture (dramatic category) and best director, “Slumdog Millionaire” officially leads the the Oscar pack. After winning acting awards in two different films, Winslet is going to be ubiquitous in coming weeks, possibly so much so that the media overload will torpedo her Academy chances.

I guess we could all see the “Slumdog” wave coming, but I will admit to a certain level of mystification (and not just because I found the movie a dazzling display of style without much substance). Without getting into some medieval Christology about what constitutes an independent film and what doesn’t, let’s just add that several of the other plausible best-picture contenders — “Frost/Nixon,” “Revolutionary Road,” “The Reader” and “Happy-Go-Lucky” — are also adult-oriented films with fairly small audiences, and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” looks like the only expensive, star-vehicle film still in the running.

Here’s the sum total of American actors or filmmakers to win anything at the Globes: Mickey Rourke (best actor, dramatic category) and Woody Allen (best picture, comedy or musical category). I’m sorry, but that’s just weird. Not just two guys firmly associated with other eras of movie history, but two guys who had seemingly become the punch lines to their own careers. Nobody can resist a good comeback story — Scott Fitzgerald’s maxim needs adjusting: now all American lives have second acts — and I’m as delighted as anybody to discover that Rourke remains a great actor whose life has been full of bad decisions, or that Allen can still deliver a mean-spirited comedy with a cast of hot young women. But it simply is not a good sign for American film if our two award-worthy talents have a combined age of 129.

(For the record, I buy Rourke’s story that his face looks so weird now because he got the bejesus beaten out of him during his ill-advised professional boxing career of the early ’90s and required corrective surgery. I could tell you a whole long story about that, full of lowlife supporting characters and cryptic Irish Republican Army connections, but here’s what it amounts to: I kind of knew a guy who kind of knew Rourke from long nights in Atlantic City, and he said that was the deal.)

Europeans have always loved Rourke, so it’s kind of perfect that the foreign-press mavens preferred his turn in “The Wrestler” to Sean Penn’s title role in “Milk.” I’m still inclined to believe that Oscar voters will swing the other way, as it were. As for Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (effectively a European-made film, beyond Allen and Scarlett Johansson), I’d damn near bet the ranch that it won’t be nominated for best picture, or in any category above the supporting actor/actress level.

Beyond Rourke, the other acting Globes went to a panoply of English-speaking non-Yanks: Winslet, Winslet, another English chick, Winslet, an Irishman, Winslet and a dead Australian. OK, that’s too many Winslets; it’s one of those names where the more you type it the stranger it looks. English chick no. 2 is Sally Hawkins of “Happy-Go-Lucky,” who might not even get an Oscar nomination even though she deserves one, the Irishman is Colin Farrell of “In Bruges” (who might not etc.) and you know who the Aussie is and what’s going to happen in that category.

While the foreign-film category at the Globes is even more random than at the Oscars, Ari Folman’s extraordinary Israeli animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir” now becomes the favorite in at least that category (why it wasn’t also nominated as an animated feature I have no idea). More surprising still, none of the foreign films nominated was an utter embarrassment — with the possible exception of “The Baader Meinhof Complex,” the German entry, which I haven’t seen.

Major omissions: Clint Eastwood’s two big movies (“Changeling” and “Gran Torino”) took home exactly zilcho. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Frank Langella, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Penelope Cruz, Rebecca Hall and Anne Hathaway were all nominated for something somewhat plausible and didn’t win. Then again, Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Jr. were also nominated (for “Tropic Thunder”), which comes under the heading of Those Wacky Golden Globes. “Frozen River” star Melissa Leo, this year’s poster girl for downbeat American neorealist film, wasn’t nominated at all. Maybe she needs to get her face beat in, marry her stepchild and live to be 129. And then change her name to Winslet.

 

Andrew O

More Andrew O'Hehir.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 21 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

For the latest movie coverage from Andrew O'Hehir, see his author page.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
2693 points2694 points | 1221 comments
vote
Anyone Regret Slashing National Weather Service Budget Now?: With GOP-backed cuts to forecasting agency, experts warn future storms will go undetected and more lives lost
870 points871 points | 420 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator wants to offset tornado aid with other cuts
123 points124 points | 41 comments
vote
Horrifying new trend: Posting rapes to Facebook " In Chicago this weekend, prosecutors announced three teenaged boys will tried as adults for aggravated criminal sexual assault after allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl — and posting a video of the attack on Facebook."
24 points25 points | 13 comments
vote
Recent scandals are Whitewater redux, not Watergate
17 points18 points | 2 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations