Barbie, Bradley Cooper and Taylor Swift’s hard stare: 10 things we learned from the 2024 Golden Globes

Barbie might be bust

It went into the race with the most nominations (nine) but came home with a couple of consolation prizes: for Billie Eilish’s song, and the new award for making lots of money.

How come? Well, it’s an unusually strong year, especially in the categories Barbie had the best shot in: Margot Robbie was never realistically going to beat Emma Stone (for Poor Things), who herself looks now likely to be knocked out by Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone for the best female actor prize when it’s not split between comedy and drama.

There may also be a sense that, although the great pink saviour did wonderful things for cinema, she oughtn’t to hog all the glory as well as the cash and buzz. Leaning to Oppenheimer instead allows for the concession that press and popularity are a good thing, but keeps things donnish too.

Anyway, sadly, Sunday’s snub does bode badly for Barbie. After all, if the Globes weren’t going to give the nod to Ryan Gosling for his definition-of-a-supporting-turn (the supporting actor award went to Robert Downey Jr for Oppenheimer), then more august bodies are unlikely to.

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Maestro could benefit from its Globes cold-shouldering

Bradley Cooper’s decade-in-the-prep transformation into Leonard Bernstein would traditionally have fast-tracked him to being smothered in silverware. But he was shunned in favour of Cillian Murphy – a popular winner, but not so much of a lock that the sympathy vote might not give Cooper (who has now lost six times at the Globes) the edge later in the race.

Don’t discount The Holdovers

Classy and charming speeches from Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph will only fuel the bonhomie felt in Hollywood for Alexander Payne’s intimate comedy-drama: a movie less potentially polarising than Oppenheimer, Poor Things or Killers of the Flower Moon. A minority dislike each of those three. The Holdovers seems to leave nobody cold. Might it yet split the vote at the Oscars?

Christmas party season is still going strong in Hollywood

The stars were a little thin on the ground at last year’s Globes, and those who did show up looked slightly unsure whether they should have. This year, everyone and their mother rocked up and looked ecstatic to be doing so. The whole awards season this year is defined by a post-strike headiness, and there is a palpable sense of enjoyment in the usual conveyor belt of interviews and red carpet opportunities which bespeaks of a thousand showboats grounded for many months.

People seem genuinely pleased to see each other, and to talk about their work. Can this be sustained another two months until the Oscars? A test of acting prowess may be required.

Politics is not on the agenda

The hot water some stars found themselves in after wading in with their opinions on the Israel-Gaza war may have acted as a considerable deterrent to anyone who fancied having their say at the ceremony. But after so many references last year to the Globes’s own racism, as well as Ukraine, as well as the long-bubbling anti-Trump nods, perhaps serious hat fatigue had set in. The closest we got were Gladstone using her speech to speak Blackfeet and reflect that “Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera”. That and Gillian Anderson’s anatomical frock.

The Globes still don’t know a good thing when they have it

Get Taylor Swift in the room – great! But then give her neither a prize nor a chance to air her pipes, and add insult to injury with a terrible joke – not so good.

The producers of this year’s show exposed their lack of judgment with endless missteps, not confined to hiring Jo Koy as the worst awards host in living memory.

His lack of panache was highlighted by the smooth success of the presenting skits by the likes of Will Ferrell and Kirsten Wiig – and by the Globes’s most successful host, Ricky Gervais, picking up the new standup prize.

Jennifer Lawrence is still an awards season asset

Up for female comedy actor for her role in the knockabout sex comedy No Hard Feelings, Lawrence – who didn’t have a shot – gamely mouthed “If I don’t win, I’m leaving” to the reaction camera which every other nominee studiously attempts to ignore when their name is read out.

Second prize in the casual-knowingness-about-camera-placement awards goes to Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner, who splashily canoodled in the ad breaks.

The new voters are properly international

Much of the original, tainted, 90-odd membership of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association were binned along with the name (despite a few confused speeches still hat-tipping them), with a properly foreign and diverse 180 or so taking their place. Whoever the new voters are, they do have some taste, giving the best animation prize to The Boy and the Heron, and lock-stepping with the Cannes jury over Justine Triet’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, which took best screenplay as well as best foreign language film and now looks a certainty for a best picture Oscar nomination.

Meryl Streep can lose

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Never bet against Meryl Streep – but maybe if you do, put down a lot of cash. Few could have foreseen Streep would be denied a record-setting 10th Globe win for her turn in Only Murders in the Building, and fewer still that she’d be trounced by Elizabeth Debicki as Ghost Diana in The Crown.

The Globes are still shutting out the season’s best films

A few of the snubs – Saltburn; May December – could be seen coming. Sadly the same could also be said for the yet more egregious slights. There was nothing for The Zone of Interest. Nothing for All of Us Strangers. Not a sausage for Past Lives. Business as usual.