Review of the 2010 Golden Globe Awards

I thoroughly enjoyed the 2010 Golden Globe Awards last night, the first major motion picture and television award show of the decade, and not just because one of the recipients I was rooting for, Sandra Bullock for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama for her inspiring role as the mother of Michael Oher, the troubled African American youth turned college graduate and professional athlete, but also because it had a delicate balance of so many things other award shows either lack or have in excess. Three things I loved about the Golden Globe Awards last night are 1) no all out sweeps 2) no surplus of painfully long drawn out acceptance speeches and 3) a straight forward format of award presentations.

I appreciated the fact that there were no sweeps where one movie, television show, actor or actress winning most if not all of multiple awards they’re nominated for. While Avatar was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards (Best Song, Best Original Score, Best Director, and Best Picture), it received only two – albeit the two big ones of the night – Best Director and Best Picture. As the delightfully graceful and humble jazz musician Nora Jones put it when she took home a whopping eight Grammy’s in 2003, “It’s like being at a party where I get all the cake and there’s none left for everyone else.”

It’s one thing for us the viewing audience to want our favorite performer to take home all the gold, especially since we tend to root for only the one or two we happen to have seen or are familiar with, but for the voting academy to put all of their eggs in one basket by over anointing one or two recipient is both boring and irritating. I’m not asking that a major motion picture epic that rakes in record breaking ticket sales such as Titanic or a television show with solid high ratings be forced to share its richly deserved accolade with its fellow nominees, but just be fair with the diversity of talents and recognize them all and not just vote robotically for the same one or two. Thankfully the Hollywood Foreign Press Association got this part right this year, and other award shows would do very well to follow suit.

Unlike several other award ceremonies (and it would be unfair to single out any one as they are all guilty of this) there were relatively few nudging along by the orchestra because of long drawn out acceptance speeches. Those uncomfortable cringes you feel while watching someone’s speech hurried by the sounds of flutes and violins is never dull.

For the most part that was not the case last night. Even Martin Scorsese, the recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement, while given more latitude because of the nature of the award made his speech relatively short and pointed. However, Sandra Bullock was given the hint to wrap up twelve seconds prior to completion even though she won in a major category and her speech was less than two minutes long. Perhaps it was because it was minutes before the show was over; nevertheless I blame the ensemble and not her for that one.

The content was especially great to hear in many of these speeches as well. Nicole Kidman set the stage by pointing out that everyone’s thoughts were with Haiti during their suffering through the devastating earthquake. Drew Barrymore, as she humbly receives her first Golden Globe in her long acting career, praises Mo’Nique, the first recipient of the evening, as a beautiful person who set the bar for giving speeches for the night in an attempt to draw inspiration to get through her own. If you come to see who wins the awards, you stick around if you must for a graceful speech. Last night there was much of that, including again Sandra Bullock as she fought back the tears in thanking her husband for having her back, a meaningful line taken from the movie for which she was awarded for. I didn’t wear out the fast forward button as in years past.

Finally I appreciated the format of the show. Twenty-five award categories and they went back to back in announcing the nominees and recipients. Imagine that, an award show actually presenting awards. Seriously! The Grammy Awards has made me really appreciate this simple yet profound format because of its lack thereof. The Grammy’s has transformed from an award show to a televised concert where they squeeze in the names of award winners and occasionally have a live celebrities present nominees plus winners. Simply displaying still shots of winner after winner between musical acts robs the audience of the opportunity for exposure to artists they would otherwise not have seen – the nominees. By quickly going through the categories last night, I was able to learn of movies that I may want to watch in the future. The Golden Globe quickly went through the presentations of all twenty-five categories, nearly one after the other, without excessive interruptions of performances or special presentations.

I look forward to the award shows coming up this year. The next major one is the 2010 Grammy Awards. I hope my accessment of the show turns out to be antiquated, and that it has returned back to its original format of more awards and less performances. It will do well to learn from last night’s Golden Globe Awards. I can only hope.