The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: The Golden Globe Nominations

As expected, there were some great (and not-so-great) surprises this morning with the announcement of this year's Golden Globes nominations.  In typically Such Moving Pictures fashion, here are the best, worst, and ugliest nominations and oversights.

The Good

-Strong Best Picture line-ups.  Even on the Comedy/Musical side of things, there's not a bad film in the bunch, with at least two of the nominees (The Artist and Midnight in Paris) bound for Best Picture Oscar nominations, and the others all due for some sort of recognition.  The Drama side is pretty unsurprising, but that's only because the nominees are uniformly strong and right up the HOllywood Foreign Press Association's alley.

-Best Actor - Comedy/Musical nomination for Brendan Gleeson for The Guard.  Sometimes the HFPA pulls a pleasant surprise like this one, nominating Mad-Eye Moody for the funny Irish cop flick that very few people saw.  Gleeson was great in it, and his nomination shouldn't come as a surprise (though it does) considering the love In Bruges got a few years back, including a nomination for Gleeson and a win for his co-star, Colin Farrell.

-Ryan Gosling love.  I expected the actor would get double nominated, but thought his Crazy, Stupid, Love. turn would be considered supporting.  Not so, as Gosling instead got dual Best Actor nods.  After the amazing year he's had, it's well-deserved.

-The Ides of March racks up the nominations.  I suspected that The Ides of March would rake in the nods with its all-star cast and director.  But even I didn't expect it to have the strong showing it did, getting nominations for Screenplay and Director.  While many have forgotten or shrugged off George Clooney's tense political flick, I consider it among the year's best, so I'm thrilled it's getting its moment in the sun.

-Some surprising acting nominees.  A couple movies that haven't gotten the attention one might expect them to got some today, including Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet getting nominated for Carnage and Viggo Mortensen being recognized for A Dangerous Method.  Other surprises include Rooney Mara for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Janet McTeer for Albert Nobbs. While I've yet to see any of these yet, it's nice to have some variety in the proceedings.

-The HFPA resisted the temptation to nominated Julia Roberts for Larry Crowne, and I applaud them.  Looks like they learned their lesson with The Tourist last year.

The Bad

-An utter lack of Muppet love.  While many thought The Muppets would land some major nominations, I took rest in the fact that it was guaranteed a couple nominations for Best Original Song.  Not so, as Jim Henson's lovable creations were nowhere to be seen, with songs from Machine Gun Preacher and W.E. taking spots instead.

-Melissa McCarthy getting snubbed for Bridesmaids.  If there was one place McCarthy should've been a shoo-in, it's the Globes, since they dedicate half of their show to comedies.  McCarthy turned in one of the very best performances of the year.  The least the HFPA could've done was bump her up to the Best Actress - Comedy/Musical category.

-The absence of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has me nervous.  Stephen Daldry's touching tale seems like a natural choice for the HFPA, especially with big-name stars like Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock involved.  It's too early to count it out of the Oscar race (and, of course, too early to say if it even deserves to be there), but today's shut-out might hint at a lack of excitement for the adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer novel.

-While it's not unexpected, I'm still disappointed that The Tree of Life failed to show up at all.

The Ugly

-Sofia Vergara's pronunciation of "Martin Scorsese."  Woody Harrelson's reaction was great.

-Speaking of Harrelson, while his initial jabs about Rampart were funny, it got a little uncomfortable when he continued talking about how a lot had been left off this morning.

-My Week With Marilyn is a great film, and a worthy contender, but is it a musical or comedy?  No.  Apparently, I didn't get the memo that the film was falling on that side of things, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised since the film has a couple musical numbers.  After all, the HFPA is the group that considered Pride and Prejudice a comedy (or did they think it was a musical because the girls play piano?) a few years ago.