Golden Globes 2016: Who’s Going to Win
Winning a Golden Globe doesn’t have the same cachet as getting an Oscar or an Emmy, but the awards ceremony itself is often more entertaining, for one big reason: It’s unpredictable. The stars are boozed-up, the atmosphere’s informal, and the outcomes are … well, sometimes pretty bizarre. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a small organization, and keeps both its membership and its voting practices shrouded in mystery. It’s often hard to make sense of its choices, because shadowy cabals would rather not explain themselves.
The best any intrepid prognosticator can do, in fact, is to try to discern some patterns. For example. when it comes to the motion picture categories, the Globes function in part as an Oscar rehearsal, giving the year’s most obvious front-runners a chance to practice their speeches and to secure their positions on the road to the Academy Awards. But the HFPA also likes to make movie stars happy, and has been known to honor actors like Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio well before Oscar voters do. On the television side, meanwhile, the Golden Globes seem committed to zigging where the Emmys zag — always looking to be the first to spot the next hot property rather than handing out prizes to the same shows year after year.
With all that in mind, and with the caveat that this year’s batch of Globe nominees is one of the craziest and most infuriating in recent memory, here are some reasonable guesses as to what’s going to happen this Sunday night.
Best Motion Picture, Drama
Nominees: Carol; Mad Max: Fury Road; The Revenant; Room; Spotlight
Prediction: Spotlight
This is one of those categories where the HFPA tends to fall into line with every other significant awards-giving body, and since this well-crafted, star-studded drama about investigative journalists has racked up win after win, it seems highly probable that the producers will have to make room for a Golden Globe on their shelf — and then an Oscar a month later.
Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
Nominees: The Big Short; Joy; The Martian; Spy; Trainwreck
Prediction: The Big Short
The comedy prize is supposed to allow the Hollywood Foreign Press to salute a film that couldn’t crack the notoriously humor-averse Academy Awards ballot, though more often than not, the prize goes to the most prestigious movie that’s kind of funny. Only two of these nominees are straight-up comedies; and neither of those is favored to win — which means the real competition here is between the lighthearted science-fiction adventure and the disturbingly bleak economics lesson. The latter has the edge, if only because its creative team is bound to give a more exciting speech.
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