Golden Globes & Generations

The Golden Globes have made their choices. This organization is basically what's known as the Hollywood Foreign Press. In other words it's a bunch of people  from other countries who suck up to Hollywood.

Nobody really cared about them in the past but when they put Tina Fey and Amy Poehler showed up with some great hostess bits, the foreign critics got some notice. The awards don't really signify the Oscars nor the actors, writers and directors guilds, but the Globes will influence some of the people, mostly the ones who don't see all the movies.

Screeners (dvds) are usually sent out to actors, directors and writers although they don't send dvds to all the actors which number in the thousands. And the final awards at the Oscars are voted on only by those privileged actors, writers and directors and producers as well as a handful of camerapersons etc.

This year is the first one that I didn't really care for any of the movies. 

It's also a year with directors nobody's ever heard of. One could consider that the old Hollywood boys like Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola and others aren't in the mix anymore. Lucas even sold his Star Wars franchise to J.J. Abrams, who can do a suitable remake quite well, only by copying every frame.

I guess this is the beginning of the end of my generation's hold on movies, a lot of the big movies studios make are from people you really don't know. And those movies tend to be the likes of Spiderman 1, 2 and 3 and all those other superhero movies that seem to look all the same.

We (being my boomer generation) had directors and actors and writers who separated our generation from our parents by making distinctive movies specifically for us. Now that we're getting older, the new generation seems more intent on making remakes of our movies.

What's left is a group of Gen-X people who simply copy what we did. Most of their movies end up nowhere because they really don't have a history of anything except watching VHS and DVD copies of movies.

A better generation was probably the World War 11 soldiers, many of whom were actors, writers and directors. They came from a horrible war and having seen it close up, made movies that really stood up for something more than popcorn entertainment. People like Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, John Ford, William Wyler and dozens of others who told stories often based on their war experiences.

But getting back to the Globes. Here's some of the potential winners/losers:

Birdman - seems to be picking up a few awards already.
Boyhood - a movie very few people saw because it's quite long.
The Imitation Game - great acting but more of a TV movie.
Gone Girl - One award but nothing for Ben Affleck whom I don't like anyways.
Grand Budapest Hotel - A Wes Anderson film, I've never really liked his films.
Selma - Story based on Martin Luther King.
Theory of Everything - seems to be getting some good reviews.
Big Eyes - not out yet but in the running due to director Tim Burton.
St. Vincent - one of several Bill Murray movies out lately. 

Okay, now what about one of the biggest movies of the year?

Ever hear of Unbroken?

It's probably one of the biggest movies of the year, directed by Angelina Jolie.

Yes, that Angelina Jolie. 

Unbroken hasn't gotten one single vote from the foreign press and nobody knows why? Is it because she directed it, or because Brad's movie Fury, flopped? Who knows but there's been some emails around town that Angelina isn't all that talented as a director and that she gets whatever she wants. 

And some people don't like that.

But because the foreign press wants to be liked by the studios so they can go to press parties and hang around studio bosses. 

There's also a new version of Annie (which was a play and a musical movie before) and Into the Woods, also a musical play.

And then there's Jennifer Aniston in her continued effort to show us how brilliant she really is in Cake. Really?Look at those tears? Who knew she could cry?

Next are the Actors awards, the Writers awards, the Camera men/women awards and numerous other awards that the public really doesn't know exists. Things like casting awards, which are the jobs to find actors for movies. This group has been trying to get into the Oscars for a long time but haven't succeeded.

The problem is that the title for these people is "casting director". So what's the problem?

Well, directors don't like to think that the casting agents are responsible for casting the movie. And they have a point, casting directors "suggest" a lot of actors but the director casts only one for each role.

So there we are for now.

My choice is Angelina, I think she made a hell of a movie. So there. 

Okay, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on multi-millionaire Jennifer Aniston. What's that Beatle's song "Money can't buy you love?"

Right now the rain has stopped and blue sky suddenly is appearing at least for the moment.