So here we have "The 74th Golden Globe Awards", the most recent edition of an annual television event that can be described as the second biggest awards show of the year probably. The host this time was Jimmy Fallon and he was an embarrassment to say the least. Most of his jokes were pretty bad and embarrassing, so the good thing is that he really did not have that much screen time compared to Kimmel at the Oscars for example. But this still goes completely against the concept of hosting if the host rarely even shows up. The lowest moment (apart from the liberal trolling) was probably his introduction to Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain. I'd certainly have preferred a host-less ceremony and Fallon sure has nothing on the talent and recognition value of fearless Ricky Gervais, the previous host here. Quite a shame if one of Hollywood's best late night talkers is as bad as this. Not that the likes of Kimmel etc. are much better now with the old guns gone (Letterman, Leno). But back to this awards show. In terms of the winners, it was a march to glory for La La Land. It dominated the awards. Yes it was certainly the front runner in all categories except screenplay, but it did not only win the latter, but also avoided upsets. There were for example several other contenders in Lead Actor Comedy/Musical and Chazelle wasn't a lock either.
Apart from that, the biggest surprise of the night was maybe the very first award, namely ATJ winning supporting actor for "Nocturnal Animals". Other surprises include Tracee Ellis Ross winning for Black-ish and the domination by "The Night Manager". Actually looking at Laurie, Colman and Hiddleston's win, it is almost surprising that OJ still took home the big prize. Atlanta and Glover triumphing over "Transparent" and "Mozart" was also not too expected I guess. I personally would have loved a Mandy Moore victory, but it's good enough she got nominated and also presented an award. Also with "The Crown", there were some nice surprises (also Elle/Huppert, who basically destroyed Portman's chances for a second Oscar there) overall that night really and it is a shame that people had nothing better to do in their acceptance speeches than to criticize current politics instead of paying tribute to those people who turned them into the stars they have become. The worst example of this would be Meryl Streep's acceptance speech for her lifetime achievement award. I really like her as an actress, but she certainly went south in my appreciation that night. As if Viola Davis' cringeworthy and utterly over-the-top presentation wasn't painful to sit through enough already, what followed in Streep's address to the room wasn't any better.
Anyway, this argument can also be used to appreciate these who kept talking about the essential instead of the new oh so evil leader, talk that has nothing to do at this awards show. And lets be honest, if Trump says Streep is overrated, he probably isn't wrong looking at how many Oscar nominations she has and how many equally talented actresses from her age group have. Now about the honorees again, I wish I could comment more about how I like the winners/nominees, but fact is, especially in the television categories, that I have seen hardly anything because it takes a long time to catch up with all this stuff, so I shall remain silent there. As a whole, I would give this one a thumbs-down, not because of the winners, but because of all the people abusing their speeches for political message and I do not approve of this no matter what political direction they are taking. So yeah, the highs were not frequent enough to make for a good show here and the lows were extremely low. Glad the event only went for slightly over 2 hours and not 3 hours as it says on IMDb. Best thing about the night. They got the right envelopes.
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