“NOMADLAND”, director Chloe Zhao’s moving drama about van dwellers and Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire “Borat 2” won top movie honours at a scaled-down virtual ceremony at the Golden Globes, which was held bi-coastally due to the coronavirus pandemic. Zhao, a Chinese-American filmmaker, also won the best director trophy, becoming the only second woman director and the first woman director of Asian descent to win at the Globes. Her film “Nomadland”, starring Frances McDormand as a widow who hits the road in a van after losing her job, has been a critics favourite since its world premiere at Venice Film Festival 2020.

 

It also won the top prize of the Golden Lion at the European gala. Andra Day emerged as the surprise best actress motion picture drama winner for her role of singer Billie Holliday in “The United States vs Billie Holliday”. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the body that conducts the Golden Globes which is facing fire over its lack of Black representation among its ranks, tried to douse the flames as it awarded people of colour in top acting categories. During their opening monologue co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who hosted the ceremony from New York and Los Angeles, made fun of HFPA.

 

“The HFPA is made up of around 90 international -- no Black -- journalists who attend movie junkets each year in search of a better life,” Fey said. They also mentioned that “a number of Black-led projects were overlooked” as awards-season frontrunners “Judas and the Black Messiah”, “Da 5 Bloods”, “One Night in Miami” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” were not nominated for best picture. Cohen, the creator of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”, was named best comedy movie actor and Rosamund Pike clinched the best actress Globe for her role of a crooked legal guardian of the elderly in “I Care a Lot”.

 

“Thank you to the all-white Hollywood Foreign Press,” Cohen said in his speech. Daniel Kaluuya won best supporting role Globe, his first, for playing the Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah”. Jodie Foster won the best supporting actress award, her fourth trophy, for her role in “The Mauritanian”, a story about illegal detention in the US. Aaron Sorkin won his career’s third Globe in the best screenplay category for his true-story legal drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7”. The screenwriter quipped he would “not forgive” fellow nominees Zhao, Emerald Fennell and Regina King for inspiring his daughter to pursue filmmaking. Jamie Foxx-voiced animated drama “Soul”, about a musician trapped in a strange land between earth and the afterlife, won the best animated as well as the score trophy. 

 

 

 

CHADWICK Boseman was posthumously honoured with a Golden Globe for his performance as the strong-willed trumpet player Levee who marches to his own beat in the musical period drama “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, the actor’s swansong. Boseman, who died in August at the age of 43 following a four year-long private battle with colon cancer, won the award in the best performance by an actor in a motion picture category. The actor’s wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted the award on his behalf in a Zoom call. “He would thank God. He would thank his parents. He would thank his ancestors for their guidance and their sacrifices. He would thank his incredible team, on and off set.