Year: 2017

Producers Guild picks the usual suspects for best picture…plus Deadpool

The Producers Guild of America named its picks for best movie of the year on Tuesday, choosing awards season’s favourites such as La La Land, Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea but also snarky underdog Deadpool.

The comic-book superhero comedy starring Ryan Reynolds is carving an unusual path through awards territory with nominations by the Writers Guild for best screenplay and two nominations for Golden Globes.

Canadian-born Reynolds is one of the producers of the foul-mouthed hit, which was his pet project for more than a decade. He penned an awards season campaign letter to Hollywood, in character as Deadpool, to advance the movie’s chances.

An unlikely R-rated box office hit, Deadpool was shot in Vancouver.

Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s alien contact movie Arrival also made the PGA list.

The PGA nominations are considered solid indicators of Oscar potential, because of strong influence of producers in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as a similar voting system.

Its full list of nominees:

Arrival
Deadpool
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
La La Land
Lion
Manchester By the Sea
Moonlight

While the PGA and the Academy often agree on the best movie, last year the producers picked The Big Short, while the Oscar went to Spotlight.

In the animated category, the PGA’s nominations are:

Finding Dory
Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
The Secret Life of Pets
Zootopia.
The PGA winners will be announced Jan. 28.

Ryan Gosling, La La Land big winners at Golden Globes

La La Land steamrolled through the Jimmy Fallon-hosted Golden Globes that mixed the expected, champagne-sipping Hollywood celebration with often-voiced concern over president-elect Donald Trump.

Damien Chazelle’s Los Angeles musical, which came in with a leading seven nominations, won in every single one of those categories, topped by best motion picture – comedy or musical. Chazelle won both best director and best screenplay.

Ryan Gosling of London, Ont., won best actor in a comedy or musical for his performance in the film, his co-star Emma Stone prevailed as best actress in a comedy of musical, and La La Land also won for best score (Justin Hurwitz) and best song for City of Stars.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been mistaken for Ryan Reynolds,” Gosling joked, looking at his fellow nominee (and fellow Canadian), the star of Deadpool. In one of the evening’s more emotional acceptance speeches, Gosling dedicated his award to his late brother-in-law, Juan Carlos Mendes.

The night’s final award went to Barry Jenkins’ tender coming of age drama Moonlight. Its sole award among six nominations was for best motion picture, drama.

Should Moonlight and La La Land both be nominated on Jan. 24 for best picture Academy Award they will not be separated by category as in the Golden Globes.

Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) and Isabelle Huppert took home the top acting awards in the dramatic category. Affleck’s win was widely predicted, while Huppert in Elle beat out a strong field of nominees that included Amy Adams (Arrival) and Natalie Portman (Jackie).

Meryl Streep, the night’s Cecil B. DeMille Award honoree, supplied Sunday evening’s most striking rebuke to Trump. Streep, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, called the president-elect’s mocking of a disabled reporter the year’s performance that most “stunned her.”

After listing the humble upbringings of several actors, she argued for the multinational makeup of Hollywood, Streep listed off the far-flung homes of stars from Dev Patel to Gosling — who she complimented “like all the nicest people” is Canadian.

“Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if you kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts,” Streep said to loud applause.

The show got off to a rocky start Sunday, with a broken teleprompter initially stalling host Jimmy Fallon, who still managed to start the show with a singing-and-dancing ode to La La Land and a steady diet of Donald Trump jokes.

“Cut to Justin Timberlake, please,” implored a desperate Fallon as he improvised while another teleprompter was brought in. It was the second recent fiasco for Globes producer Dick Clark Productions, which presented the infamous Mariah Carey flub on New Year’s Eve.

In a more truncated monologue, Fallon’s sharpest barbs weren’t directed at the stars in the room — as was the style of frequent host Ricky Gervais — but president-elect Trump. He compared Trump to the belligerent teenage king Joffrey of Games of Thrones. Fallon’s first line, once the telemprompter was working, was to introduce the Globes as “one of the few places left where America still honours the popular vote.”

That, though, isn’t quite true. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a collection of 85 members, has its own methods of selecting winners. Best supporting actress winner Viola Davis, the co-star of Denzel Washington’s August Wilson adaptation Fences, alluded to the group’s reputation for being wined and dined.

“I took all the pictures, went to luncheon,” said Davis, to knowing chuckles through the ballroom. “But it’s right on time.”

While Davis’s march to an Oscar seems virtually assured, other picks were more idiosyncratic.

British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson took best supporting actor for his performance in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, in what could be considered a surprise win in a category with Mahersala Ali from Moonlight and Jeff Bridges from Hell or High Water.

There were expected winners, like The People v. O.J. Simpson taking best miniseries, as well as an award for that show’s Sarah Paulson. Other winners were less prepared – Donald Glover looked visibly surprised when his FX series Atlanta won best comedy series over heavyweights like Veep and Transparent.

Hugh Laurie, star of The Night Manager, also seemed taken aback when he was announced as best supporting actor in a limited series or TV film over the likes of John Travolta (The People v. O.J. Simpson) and John Lithgow (The Crown).

Laurie was one of the few early winners to pepper his acceptance speech with comments about Trump. “I accept this award on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere,” he said. The Night Manager won two more awards, including best actor for Tom Hiddleston.

Paul Verhoeven’s Elle won best foreign language film while Disney’s Zootopia took best animated feature. Other winners included Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish) and Billy Bob Thornton (Goliath).

Meryl Streep unloads on Trump in powerful Golden Globes speech

Meryl Streep accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award at Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony and used her speech as an opportunity to slam President-elect Donald Trump without ever mentioning him by name.

In her speech, Streep called out Trump for mocking New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski for his disability during a rally in 2015. Kovaleski has a congenital joint condition, and Trump impersonated the reporter by waving his hands around wildly. (The president-elect denied he was making fun of Kovaleski for his disability.)

“There was one performance this year that stunned me — it sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good, there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth,” she said. “It was the moment where the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can’t get it out of head because it wasn’t a movie, it was real life.”

She continued, “This instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everybody’s life because it gives permission for other people to do the same. Disrespect invited disrespect, violence incites violence, and when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.”

Streep also echoed sentiments voiced earlier in the evening by fellow Globe recipient Hugh Laurie (who joked this might be the last Golden Globes ceremony because the Hollywood Foreign Press Association decides the winners), noting “all of us in this room belong to one of the most vilified segments in American society right now … Hollywood, foreigners and the press.”

Earlier in the speech, Streep mentioned how “Hollywood is a bunch of people from other places” and “crawling with outsiders and foreigners, so if you kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

Streep also voiced support for the press — “we’ll need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth,” she said — and ended with a tribute to her late friend, Carrie Fisher.

“As my friend, the dearly departed Princess Leia said to me, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you friend.”

You can read her speech in full below:

“I love you all. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve lost my voice in screaming in lamentation this weekend and I have lost my mind sometimes earlier this year so I have to read. Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press, just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said, you and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places. I was born and raised and educated in the public schools in New Jersey; Viola [Davis] was born in sharecroppers cabin in South Carolina and came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island; Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn; Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio; Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy; and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in Ireland and she’s here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, and is here playing an Indian raised in Tasmania. So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.

An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like, and there were many, many, many powerful performances that did exactly that — breathtaking, compassionate work. But there was one performance this year that stunned me, it sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good, there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was the moment where the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can’t get it out of head because it wasn’t in a movie, it was real life. And this instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in a public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life because it gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence, and when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

Okay this brings me to the press. We need the principal press to hold power to account, to call him them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists because we’re gonna need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.

One more thing — once, when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, isn’t it such a privilege Meryl, just to be an actor? Yeah it is, and we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the actor’s empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight. As my friend, the dearly departed Princess Leia said to me, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you friend.”

Following Streep’s speech, many Hollywood stars praised her words — while some Conservative commentators, including Sean Hannity, took issue with her statements.

Golden Globes 2017: See the full list of winners

Just another day of sun: La La Land swept the Golden Globes on Sunday night, breaking a record for most total wins with seven. The modern-day musical won every award it was nominated for at the ceremony.

In addition to winning Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, La La Land took home awards in the musical categories (best song and best score), as well as Best Director and Best Screenplay for Damien Chazelle, and Best Actor and Best Actress for stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

Other film winners include Moonlight, which won for Best Motion Picture, Drama; Zootopia, which beat out the likes of Moana and Kubo and the Two Strings for Best Motion Picture, Animated; and the French film Elle, which won Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language as well as earning a trophy for its star, Isabelle Huppert, in the Best Performance By an Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama category.

On the TV side, The Night Manager earned three acting awards: Tom Hiddleston won for best actor in a limited series, Hugh Laurie for supporting actor, and Olivia Colman for supporting actress.

Earning two awards each were Atlanta, The Crown, and The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story. Atlanta and its star Donald Glover both won awards for best TV comedy and best TV comedy actor; The Crown won best TV drama and TV drama actress for Claire Foy; and The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story and star Sarah Paulson racked up more awards in the limited series and actress in a limited series categories.

See the full list of winners and nominees below.

Best Motion Picture, Drama
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Lion
Manchester by the Sea
WINNER Moonlight

Best Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy
20th Century Women
Deadpool
Florence Foster Jenkins
WINNER La La Land
Sing Street

Best Performance By an Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
Amy Adams, Arrival
Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane
WINNER Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie

Best Performance By an Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
Annette Bening, 20th Century Women
Lily Collins, Rules Don’t Apply
Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen
WINNER Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Joel Edgerton, Loving
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences

Best Performance By an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Simon Helberg, Florence Foster Jenkins
Dev Patel, Lion
WINNER Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals

Best Performance by Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER Viola Davis, Fences
Naomie Harris, Moonlight
Nicole Kidman, Lion
Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

Best Director, Motion Picture
WINNER Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals
Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy
Colin Farrell, The Lobster
WINNER Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins
Jonah Hill, War Dogs
Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture
WINNER La La Land
Nocturnal Animals
Moonlight
Manchester by the Sea
Hell or High Water

Original Score, Motion Picture
Moonlight
WINNER La La Land
Arrival
Lion
Hidden Figures

Best Motion Picture, Animated
Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
My Life as a Zucchini
Sing
WINNER Zootopia

Best Original Song, Motion Picture
“Can’t Stop the Feeling,” Trolls
WINNER “City of Stars,” La La Land
“Faith,” Sing
“Gold,” Gold
“How Far I’ll Go,” Moana

Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language
Divines
WINNER Elle
Neruda
The Salesman
Toni Erdmann

Best Television Series, Drama
WINNER The Crown
Game of Thrones
Stranger Things
This Is Us
Westworld

Best Television Series, Musical or Comedy
WINNER Atlanta
Blackish
Mozart in the Jungle
Transparent
Veep

Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
American Crime
The Dresser
The Night Manager
The Night Of
WINNER The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series, Drama
Rami Malek, Mr. Robot
Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul
Matthew Rhys, The Americans
Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan
WINNER Billy Bob Thornton, Goliath

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series, Musical, or Comedy
Anthony Anderson, Blackish
Gael Garcia Bernal, Mozart in the Jungle
WINNER Donald Glover, Atlanta
Nick Nolte, Graves
Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television
Riz Ahmed, The Night Of
Bryan Cranston, All the Way
WINNER Tom Hiddleston, The Night Manager
Courtney B. Vance, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story
John Turturro, The Night Of

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television
Sterling K. Brown, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story
WINNER Hugh Laurie, The Night Manager
John Lithgow, The Crown
Christian Slater, Mr. Robot
John Travolta, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series, Drama
Caitriona Balfe, Outlander
WINNER Claire Foy, The Crown
Keri Russell, The Americans
Winona Ryder, Stranger Things
Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER Olivia Colman, The Night Manager
Lena Headey, Game of Thrones
Chrissy Metz, This Is Us
Mandy Moore, This Is Us
Thandie Newton, Westworld

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Felicity Huffman, American Crime
Riley Keough, The Girlfriend Experience
WINNER Sarah Paulson, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story
Charlotte Rampling, London Spy
Kerry Washington, Confirmation

Best Performance By an Actress in a Television Series, Musical, or Comedy
Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Sarah Jessica Parker, Divorce
Issa Rae, Insecure
Gina Rodriguez, Jane the Virgin
WINNER Tracee Ellis Ross, Blackish

Cecil B. DeMille Award: Meryl Streep

Jimmy Fallon Makes for an Oddly Tone-Deaf Golden Globes Host

There’s been plenty of groaning about Jimmy Fallon hosting this year’s Golden Globe awards, not least because many people are still angry with the Tonight Show host for playing cutesy with Donald Trump during his horrifyingly successful presidential campaign. So there was some serious winning-over to be done by Fallon—who has always seemed perpetually eager to please and determined to be liked—when the Globes began Sunday night.

Fallon opening the broadcast with an extended, star-heavy La La Land spoof/homage (an homage to an homage!) makes sense, then. People who’ve seen the film tend to love it; it inspires warm and sentimental feelings; and we all know that Jimmy Fallon loves a song-and-dance routine. But the movie has only been in wide release for one weekend, so the bit may not have had the broad appeal that a similar kind of thing would at the Oscars, when there will have been an extra six weeks for viewers to catch up on nominated films. Still, the opening was impressively staged, and the lineup of cameos—Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, the cast of The People v. O.J. Simpson—was a fun, starry sampling of this year’s nominees. The sketch had, however, worn out its welcome by the time Ryan Reynolds and Justin Timberlake showed up for some gay-panic humor. For a once-promising opening sequence, one that was heavily touted by NBC during its red-carpet coverage, it sure ended with a thud.

Then Fallon came out to do his opening monologue, a form raised to a high art by recent Globes hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, and . . . his teleprompter broke. So he had to vamp, doing his stuttering, “oh gosh” Jimmy Fallon thing for a uncomfortable minute or two. It was halting and awkward; Fallon seemed surprisingly uneasy doing improv on live television. Unfortunately, things didn’t get much better when a new teleprompter was set up. Fallon made a few Trump jokes—mentioning the popular vote, comparing Trump to Joffrey from Game of Thrones—which didn’t land well. Fallon is still too tainted by his hair-ruffling antics to turn around and try to get in on the Trump fatalism. It felt unearned—and a bit hypocritical.

From bad to more bad, Fallon later broke out his Chris Rock impression, imagining what that caustic comedian would say about The People v. O.J. Simpson. The joke that no winners from the show would thank Simpson himself during their speeches was funny, and a good approximation of Rock’s joke structure. But, eesh, it was ugly to watch a white guy imitating a black man’s voice, especially coming from Fallon, during this particular political moment. And it just kept going.

In general, the monologue was unpleasant. The jokes were stale and wheezy and Fallon’s lovable-cute shtick was more wearying than it was charming. Watching the show, I almost (almost) missed Ricky Gervais and his glass of beer. At least his barbs had an occasional, decorum-unsettling jolt.

As is often true of Globes hosts, Fallon didn’t do much after the monologue. Among other wan bits, he performed an awkward rap thing when introducing Michael Keaton and said “Laugh-In Inside Amy Schumer” while introducing Schumer and Goldie Hawn, which is barely even a joke. If Fallon was trying to win back some in the wake of his Trump disaster, this was not his night. Of course, Fallon has a legion of loyal fans, not to mention plenty of willing celebrity playmates—so maybe a lackluster Golden Globes–hosting job doesn’t mean much. Still, it wasn’t great for the viewer.

Then again, not all was lost Sunday night. Kristen Wiig and Steve Carell’s hilarious extended bit while introducing the best-animated-film award was a bright spot. More of that kind of thing—weird, inspired, clever without smirking—would have been appreciated on Hollywood’s second-glitziest night.