The Golden Globes desperately want you to know they still exist.
And why would you? Over the past three years the hobbling ceremony has been culturally canceled, depressingly live-tweeted (2022) and then turned into an anesthetizing lecture (2023) that scored the broadcast’s lowest ratings ever.
The scandal-plagued group has added diverse members after a backlash and was recently sold to new owners.
The 2024 edition of the Globes, which is nonetheless set to take place on Jan. 7, doesn’t even have a network or streaming service signed on to air the debacle yet.
Yikes. The sensible thing to do would be to acknowledge the inevitable and start picking out a serene casket and gravestone. “Here lies the Golden Globe Awards — the disgraced, drunk cousin of the Oscars.”
But no. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has lugged out the defibrillator once again to jumpstart the program’s barely discernible pulse.
On Tuesday, the group of cuckoo international journalists announced an idiotic new category — just what the few remaining viewers demanded, more categories! — called the Golden Globe for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.
The what?
Basically the honor is a tacit acknowledgement that nobody wants to sit through awards shows anymore, so, LOL, let’s nominate “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
This sad stunt gives the Globes an unnecessary third best picture prize (they already honor both outstanding motion picture – drama and comedy or musical) that’s solely for movies that made bank in the past year. During most of the last 10 years, this thing could have been called The Least Worst Disney or Marvel Sequel Award.
To qualify, a film must rake in $150 million worldwide or more, with at least $100 million coming from the domestic box office. (Sorry, “M3GAN,” and your lousy $95 million). Then those very stable HFPA geniuses will decide which of the boffo hits were actually good.
Call me old-fashioned, but isn’t the prize for making a lot of money … a lot of money?
In order to not alienate the powerful Netflix, Apple and Amazon, the HFPA is also allowing a streaming film to qualify through “commensurate digital streaming viewership recognized by trusted industry sources.” Whatever the hell that means.
Anyway, there has never been a more pointless year for such a transparent attention grab.
The No. 1 movie of 2023 so far, “Barbie” ($1.4 billion), will already be nominated for comedy or musical and probably win. No. 3 top grosser “Oppenheimer” ($926 million) also has a strong shot at taking home best drama.
To fill out the other slots, the HFPA can stupidly talk down to its audience by nominating “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and “Fast X.”
And to shamelessly lure in the youth — Taylor Swift.
Knowing the HFPA’s fondness for clinking glasses with hot celebrities, you can bet anything that Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert movie will make the cut (in October, it opens wide in 100 countries).
Never forget that in 2020, the Globes shockingly nominated her and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s song “Beautiful Ghosts” from the upchucked fur ball “Cats.” They can’t sink much lower than that.
But they’ll give it the ol’ college try!
The Globes has shortlisted schlock to snare stars to the red carpet forever. “The Greatest Showman,” Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Tourist” starring Johnny Depp, Sia’s terrible “Music,” “Burlesque,” “Red” and more have somehow been nominated by “journalists” who claimed to have watched them.
The truth, however, is that calling out popular movies is not the key to bringing viewers back to award shows. Neither is nominating sexy A-Listers or adding hot-button hosts and presenters.
These shindigs are done and dusted. The telecasts continue to push past four hours while being exciting for maybe 10 minutes. In an era of dwindling attention spans and entertainment saturation, all manner of awards shows are creaky affairs that have become a niche hobby. Their most watchable moments are flubs and Will Smith snapping.
I used to often write columns along the lines of “5 ways to fix award shows.” My No. 1 suggestion today would be to change the channel.
But, hey, the Globes added a “best blockbuster” category. They’re saved!
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