Golden Globes kick off pandemic-era Hollywood awards season
- Usually a star-packed party that draws Tinseltown’s biggest names, this pandemic edition will be broadcast from two scaled-down venues
- Among the films vying for top prize are Nomadland, The Trial of The Chicago 7 and Promising Young Woman
Hollywood’s award season kicks off Sunday at a very different Golden Globes, with a mainly virtual ceremony set to boost or dash the Oscars hopes of early front runners like Nomadland and The Trial of The Chicago 7.
Usually a star-packed, laid-back party that draws Tinseltown’s biggest names to a Beverly Hills hotel ballroom, this pandemic edition will be broadcast from two scaled-down venues, with frontline and essential workers among the few in attendance.
Deprived of its usual glamour, the Globes – which also honour the best in television – remain a coveted prize, and a high-profile source of momentum in the run-up to the season-crowning Oscars, which were pushed back this year to April.
Nomadland, Chloe Zhao’s paean to a marginalised, older generation of Americans roaming the West in rundown vans, has long been viewed as a front runner for the Globes’ top prize.
But it will face stiff competition from Aaron Sorkin’s Chicago 7, a courtroom drama about the city’s anti-war riots in 1968 with a mouth-watering ensemble cast including Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne and Sacha Baron Cohen.