LOS ANGELES – Golden Globe voters did little to clear up a blurry awards picture in Hollywood early Thursday, giving multiple films – “The Help,” “The Descendants” and “The Artist” — roughly the same number of nominations.But it was the snubs that will get Hollywood buzzing.
Perhaps most notable was the complete shutout of a perceived Oscar front-runner, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” a post-9/11 drama from Stephen Daldry and the producer Scott Rudin. Steven Spielberg also fared poorly, with his old-fashioned “War Horse” only picking up only a pair of nominations and Mr. Spielberg missing from the best director category.
On the opposite side of the scale, voters gave a boost to “The Ides of March,” George Clooney’s political drama. It has been a minor awards presence so far this season but walked away with four nominations, including one for best drama. The full list of nominations is here.
Members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives the awards, predictably circled around “The Artist,” a black-and-white mostly silent film from the French director Michel Hazanavicius and backed by the Weinstein Company. It received six nominations on Thursday, including one for best comedy, the most of any film.
“The Descendants,” Alexander Payne’s comic drama about a Hawaiian land baron and his splintered family, received five nominations. “The Help,” about black maids in the 1960s and the white families they serve, also landed five nominations. Both received spots in the best drama category. The other films in that elite club were “War Horse,” Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” and “Moneyball,” starring Brad Pitt, who received a best actor nod for that baseball drama.Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” picked up four nominations, including best director, best comedy and best actor in a comedy for Owen Wilson. The other nominees for best comedy (or musical) went to “50/50,” the true story of a man dealing with his cancer diagnosis, “Bridesmaids” and “My Week With Marilyn.”
Voter reaction, or lack thereof, for “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” may have signaled a distaste for the film’s very direct look at the emotional impact of the 9/11 attacks. “Those who love it, love it passionately and those who resist it find it too tough as an emotional experience,” Mr. Rudin said in a email on Thursday.
The Golden Globes are not taken seriously as artistic milestones and have a history of voting idiosyncrasies; “True Grit” received no Globe nominations last year, for instance, but went on to garner 10 nominations at the Academy Awards (albeit winning nothing). Studios have long complained that the group tends to nominate based on star wattage instead of performance in an effort to orchestrate a red-carpet spectacle. Evidence of that this year: multiple nominations for Madonna and her critically drubbed “W.E.”
Still, the Globes are picked over for clues about the Oscar race. The best picture Oscar has mirrored the association’s choice for best drama or best comedy-musical about two-thirds of the time over the last two decades.
Studios also rely on Globe nominations to fuel ticket sales and lift movies out of the year-end multiplex pile-up. This year pictures like “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “War Horse,” “The Adventures of Tintin” and “The Iron Lady” are all set for release in the days around Christmas.
The nominations were announced shortly after 5 a.m. Pacific time by the actors Gerard Butler, Woody Harrelson, Rashida Jones and Sofia Vergara.
About 17 million people watched the live Globes telecast last year, on par with the year before. The British comedian Ricky Gervais will return for the third year as host of the show, scheduled for Jan. 15 on NBC. Last year, Mr. Gervais overshadowed the ceremony with a series of barbed remarks about attending celebrities like Robert Downey Jr. and the association itself.
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