Coming-of-age drama Boyhood emerged triumphant on Sunday at the Golden Globes, Hollywood’s first major awards show, where celebrities vowed solidarity with France after the Paris attacks.
The film won three Globes — including the coveted best drama prize and best director honors for Richard Linklater — at the star-studded ceremony at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles.
The pioneering movie — made over 12 years with the same cast of actors portraying a child’s growth to adulthood — also won a best supporting actress trophy for Patricia Arquette.
Photo: AFP
“This was a very personal film for me... and it means so much to us that people have seen it and responded to it in that personal way,” Linklater said.
Dark comedy Birdman — which had started the evening with the most nominations at seven — and The Theory of Everything, about world-famous scientist Stephen Hawking, each took home two awards.
Birdman, about a washed-up film actor trying to revive his career on stage, took best musical/comedy actor prize for Michael Keaton and best screenplay for director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Photo: EPA
The Theory of Everything, the moving story of Hawking’s descent into disability, won best drama actor honors for Britain’s Eddie Redmayne, as well as best original score.
The prize for best comedy/musical film went to The Grand Budapest Hotel, a stylish caper starring Ralph Fiennes, while Amy Adams won best actress in a musical/comedy for art fraud film Big Eyes.
Comic duo Tina Fey and Amy Poehler opened the three-hour show with a sharp monologue poking fun at the Sony Pictures hack and the firestorm over The Interview, a farce about killing North Korea’s leader.
The hosts joked that the evening was to celebrate “all the movies that North Korea was okay with.”
The evening took a more serious turn when the head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — which hands out the Globes —- brought the audience to its feet with a pledge to support freedom of expression in the wake of both the Sony hack and the French attacks.
“Together we will stand united against anyone who will repress free speech, anywhere, from North Korea to Paris,” association chief Theo Kingma said.
A short time later, Oscar-winning actor Jared Leto also paid a moving tribute, speaking in French: “On vous aime. Je suis Charlie.” (“We love you. I am Charlie.”)
And George Clooney, upon accepting the Cecil B. DeMille award — an honorary Golden Globe for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment — also voiced his support, saying: “Je suis Charlie.”
On the red carpet, several stars including Clooney and his wife Amal, Helen Mirren and Kathy Bates displayed the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan, which has become a rallying cry in the wake of the deadly gun attack on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
On the small screen, online retail giant Amazon scored its first ever Golden Globes for best comedy series Transparent — a breakthrough in its bid to catch up with streaming pioneer Netflix.
The series, starring Globes winner Jeffrey Tambor, tells the story of a man who has transitioned to become a woman and is working out the thorny details of telling his family.
“This is dedicated to too many trans people that died too young,” series creator Jill Soloway said.
Netflix also took home a Globe for House of Cards star Kevin Spacey, named best actor in a television drama.
Showtime’s The Affair won two Globes for best drama series and best actress Ruth Wilson.
Unlike the Oscars, which are voted on by about 6,000 industry members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Globes are selected by fewer than 100 journalists from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
However, a Globes win can still provide a huge boost for an Oscars campaign. Oscar nominations will be announced on Thursday. The Academy Awards are to be held on Feb. 22.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS