Nominations for the 2019 Golden Globes—the drunken traveling circus of award shows—were announced today. As is tradition, it was a mixed bag of good and bad, snubs and surprises, and general bemusement. But one major nomination stood out.
Black Panther became the first superhero movie ever to be nominated for best drama picture. (Deadpool, a superhero comedy, was nominated in the combined “musical or comedy” category in 2016). And while the Golden Globes don’t always predict exactly what the Academy Awards will ultimately look like, Black Panther‘s inclusion in this Golden Globes slate could foreshadow it becoming the first superhero movie to earn an Oscar nomination for best picture when those are announced in January.
The backlash to the snubbing of The Dark Knight in 2008 is one of the reasons why the Oscars moved from five to ten best picture nominees the following year. Now with an expanded field, it seems unlikely the film academy would make that mistake with Black Panther, a gigantic box-office success that broke records around the world and became a cultural phenomenon in a way that no other superhero movie has. Oscar or no Oscar, Wakanda will always have this Golden Globe nomination.
The 2019 Golden Globes air on NBC in the US on Sunday, Jan. 6. Killing Eve star (and Golden Globe nominee!) Sandra Oh and comedian Andy Samberg will host the event. Below are our other key takeaways from today’s nominations to prepare you for the show next month. You can view the full list of nominations here.
FX’s Atlanta was snubbed…
Atlanta, a universal favorite of TV critics that was also nominated for 13 Emmys this year including best comedy series, was inexplicably left out of the Globes’ nominees for best comedy. (It was nominated last year, for its first season). The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the body of roughly 90 international entertainment journalists that hand out the Globes, tend to prefer new shows over old. So maybe they thought Atlanta lost some of its luster now that it’s no longer the new show on the block. Or maybe they were just wrong. Yeah, let’s go with that.
…but it was still a good day for FX
Lost in all the talk about the awards competition between HBO and Netflix is poor FX, the cable network responsible for The Americans, American Crime Story, and a host of other prestige shows. But no longer! FX received more nominations than all other networks at the Globes, earning 10 in total. HBO and Amazon tied for second place with nine nominations, while Netflix came in third with eight. It was an especially good day for Ryan Murphy’s groundbreaking FX series Pose, which received two nominations including one for best drama series.
Vice
led all films with six nominations
Though early word from critics on director Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic is mixed, the HFPA’s reaction to Vice was anything but. It loves itself some Christian Bale as the former US vice president. In addition to its best picture (comedy or musical) nomination, Vice actors Bale, Sam Rockwell (as former president George W. Bush), and Amy Adams (as Cheney’s wife, Lynne Cheney) all received nominations. Speaking of Amy Adams…
Twice the Amy Adams, twice the Regina King
The two actresses scored four nominations between them, King for her roles in the film If Beale Street Could Talk and the TV series Seven Seconds, Adams for Vice and her role in the HBO miniseries Sharp Object. Grabbing two nominations in the same year is unusual, but not unheard of. It has happened four times before, each time by women: Sigourney Weaver, Joan Plowright, Helen Mirren, and most recently Kate Winslet have all gotten double nominations in the past.
A Star Is Born
and
Bohemian Rhapsody
nominated as dramas, not musicals
The two music-based films entered the race in the more prestigious drama category, perhaps with next month’s Academy Award nominations announcement in mind. For A Star Is Born, an actually good film, it makes some sense: It’s very likely to earn an Oscar best picture nomination. But the presence of Bohemian Rhapsody in this category is a head-scratcher. Music films like the Freddie Mercury biopic are almost always put in the “comedy or musical” category. Even more puzzling is the film’s presence at all, since it was so disappointing. Then again, HFPA loves its stars, and Mercury was one of the biggest ever.
The best film score of the year was snubbed
The HFPA did right by nominating Justin Hurwitz’s deeply poignant score for First Man, but it made a huge mistake by not also nominating Nicholas Britell’s sublime score for the Barry Jenkins film If Beale Street Could Talk. Just listen to it! Listen to it some more! It’s beautiful. Hopefully the motion picture academy corrects this error.
Relax, Roma was not snubbed
Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma—one of the Oscar frontrunners—isn’t on the list of best drama films, but it’s not necessarily because the HFPA didn’t like it. Unlike the Oscars, Globes rules stipulate that films entered into the best foreign film category cannot also be considered in the best drama or comedy categories, which are reserved for films in English (Cuaron’s film is in Spanish). You’d expect better from a group of journalists around the world, but such are the bizarre whims of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.