Many people believe that the movie industry had nothing going on during the pandemic, what with physical theaters being closed down and the Oscars being pushed back until April. Despite the obvious setbacks, the movie industry had quite the year.
Now that 2020 has come to a close, awards season is rolling around in spite of the abundant (albeit necessary) delays. The Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards nominations have been released, and their choices are quite eclectic.
The Golden Globes nominated “Music,” the musical drama film directed by pop star Sia, despite the scandal and critical panning surrounding its release. Not only did this movie receive a 17% “Rotten” rating on critic aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, but Sia also entered some hot water in her defense of the casting of the lead actor. The film is about an autistic person, yet she casted a neurotypical person to play that role; this led to her defending the casting with snide remarks on Twitter, which had so much backlash that she deleted her account.
This isn’t the only odd choice by the Golden Globes, with their “Best Performance By an Actress In A Motion Picture” nomination of Maria Bakalova, the co-star of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Not that she doesn’t deserve the nomination (it is a fun role that she adopts with ease), it’s just an odd one for critical awards. Oddly enough, she may get nominated for this role at the Oscars, seeing as she was nominated for it in the SAGs and in the Critics Choice Awards. When looking at past Oscar nominations for this category, we see a pattern of them lining up with other award shows, so we’ll see in April if this role gets any attention from the Academy.
The Golden Globes have had an historic year in terms of their director nominations. Three of the five nominees for Best Director are women, which is unprecedented in Golden Globes history, two of which are women of color.
Last year in the Oscars, they made history by giving the Best Picture award to a foreign-language film, the global phenomenon “Parasite.” Perhaps the Oscars could imitate the SAGs and Golden Globes in giving nominations to more diverse and stronger voices in film.
Here’s to hoping the Oscars make even more history this year.
