Golden Globes wrap-up!

GOLDEN GLOBE WINNERS! – COMPLETE RED CARPET COVERAGE

I think few people would argue that the best part of last night’s Golden Globes was Ricky Gervais. Instead of sipping a glass of water in between lines, he pulled out a pint of beer. His loose attitude showed almost immediately with repeated digs against host network NBC (calling out the Steve Carell version of “The Office” for jumping the shark). But hey, instead of me talking about it, watch Gervais’ full monologue below:

AVATAR wound up winning for Best Picture with James Cameron taking Best Director. While the latter was somewhat expected, I think a lot of people were surprised that AVATAR won over more heavily favored candidates like THE HURT LOCKER and UP IN THE AIR.

It was good to see Jeff Bridges up winning an award for CRAZY HEART and sounding, well, pretty much like how we thought he’d sound. Wouldn’t you just love to hang out with this guy? Speaking of guys, you’d like to just chill with, Robert Downey, Jr. won a Best Actor, Musical or Comedy for SHERLOCK HOLMES and gave a pretty entertaining speech. Can we just get this guy to host the Oscars already? (No offense to either Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin.)

Sandra Bullock gave her Oscar hopes a serious boost with a win for THE BLIND SIDE and Meryl Streep continued to give herself a boost with a win for JULIE & JULIA. One of my favorite wins of the evening was Michael Giacchino winning for his UP score, which was easily the best of the year (UP also won the Best Animated Film award).

So what does this all mean for the Oscars? Well, not a whole lot to be honest. I think it gives AVATAR a boost as a real contender to win Best Picture despite THE HURT LOCKER winning a lot of the Guild and Critics awards. I think UP IN THE AIR suffered some setbacks after starting the Oscar season as a clear frontrunner. As I said earlier, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep took big steps forward but the Supporting Actor/Actress categories went pretty much as expected (Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique respectively). We’ll all find out soon enough as the Oscar nominations are announced on February 2nd.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a brief reminder of the genius behind Ricky Gervais. The Golden Globes host doesn’t have as much time on stage as the Oscar host so you have to pack a lot of bang for your buck. As far as I’m concerned, Gervais did just that with one of the best jokes I think I’ve heard at an awards ceremony in recent memory (all at the expense of Mel Gibson). Well played…