The 2023 awards season is officially underway with the reveal of the Golden Globe winners. It was a triumphant night for Steven Spielberg and his new movie The Fabelmans, which walked away with the top prizes for Best Picture and Best Director.
Spielberg's tender, bittersweet movie (released at Cineworld on January 27) approximates his own upbringing, focusing on a young, movie-mad kid and his devoted family.
As Sammy Fabelman grows up, he's forced to confront whether his passion for moviemaking, instilled as a child with a visit to see The Greatest Show on Earth, is, in fact, a hobby or a vocation.
The movie's excellent cast includes Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as Spielberg's surrogate screen parents. Seth Rogen and Judd Hirsch also feature. It's the latest awards triumph for Spielberg who already has three Oscars and five Golden Globes to his name.
Will The Fabelmans' 2023 Golden Globes victory convert into success at this year's Oscars? All will be revealed in due course.
Elsewhere, Cate Blanchett nabbed the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama for her blistering role in TÁR (released at Cineworld on January 13).
The actor's incendiary performance as disintegrating yet brilliant Berlin orchestra conductor has been cited by many as the best of her career. Blanchett learned how to conduct an orchestra for her role as writer-director Todd Field marshals a hypnotic breakdown of a singular yet difficult character.
Blanchett has already won two Oscars and it's expected that she will triumph at the forthcoming Academy Awards.
That said, she's got competition from crowd-pleasing favourite Michelle Yeoh who won Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Yeoh's acclaimed performance grounds this imaginative slice of multiversal madness from the directorial collective Daniels. She plays Chinese-American laundromat owner Evelyn who is encouraged to bond with her alternate selves from across the multiverse, lest the universe implode.
Yeoh is a screen veteran with a career stretching back to 1980s Hong Kong action cinema. She's never been at the forefront of an awards campaign like this before and her relative underdog status, not to mention the popularity of the movie, could tip the balance in her favour.
Everything Everywhere also cleaned up by awarding Best Supporting Actor to Ke Huy Quan who steals scenes as Evelyn's apparently clueless husband Waymond.
Quan, who has been out in the cold since the 1980s family classic The Goonies, stunned and delighted audiences with his frenetic martial arts sequences before unveiling the movie's poignant message of connection in the face of imminent emotional destruction.
Roaring early '20s Hollywood epic Babylon (released January 20) waltzed away with Best Original Score for Justin Hurwitz. The composer's full-throttle score assimilates elements of jazz, tango and classical waltz to do justice to director Damien Chazelle's bacchanalian vision.
Hurwitz and Chazelle are a dynamite duo. Friends since college, they've collaborated on the likes of La La Land, for which Hurwitz won two Oscars, and First Man, for which he won a Golden Globe. Check out the track 'Voodoo Mama' below, which is used in the movie's trailer.
It was also a strong night for Martin McDonagh's coruscating black comedy-drama The Banshees of Inisherin. The movie claimed Best Movie (Comedy or Musical), Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Colin Farrell (the actor's second, following McDonagh's In Bruges) and Best Original Screenplay for McDonagh.
Akin to Cate Blanchett's performance in TÁR, Farrell's work in Banshees has been acclaimed by many as a career-best. He plays Padraic, a well-intentioned if slightly obtuse Irish islander who is stunned when his long-time mate Colm (Brendan Gleeson) breaks off their friendship.
The ensuing conflict is, in McDonagh's typical style, as mordantly funny as it is shocking and tragic. Globes voters were evidently impressed with McDonagh's characteristic use of language as he details the snowballing impact of miscommunication set against the backdrop of the Irish Civil War.
Angela Bassett's powerfully anguished performance as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has made pop culture history.
She is the first performance to win any major kind of acting award for a Marvel movie, a vindication of her resonant turn as the Wakandan leader who is attempting to keep her kingdom together in light of her son's death.
Bassett's ability to channel her evident grief over the death of T'Challa actor Chadwick Boseman results in a standout turn that alternates between regal pride and private heartbreak.
The first Black Panther movie made a series of historic Oscar wins in 2018, claiming Best Original Score, Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. Can Bassett make history this year and become the first actor to claim an Academy Award for a comic book movie?
Finally, Austin Butler was the odds-on favourite to claim Best Actor in a Drama for Elvis. The young star's eerily convincing depiction of the iconic Elvis Presley won over the hearts and minds of global audiences, embodying The King's fierce stage presence and also his personal demons as he slides into drug-addled mania.
Despite director Baz Luhrmann's exhausting visual flash, it's Butler's vulnerability and conviction that resonates the loudest. Butler's vocal imitation of Elvis' early years (the late period is a combination of Butler and archive recordings) evidently came from exhaustive technical preparation and dedication to his subject.
It's expected that Butler will walk away with the Best Actor Oscar. That said, he may face competition from a resurgent Brendan Fraser whose role in The Whale (released February 3) has people raving about the actor's long-awaited comeback.
The full list of Golden Globe 2023 winners can be found by clicking here.
Based on these winners, what are your predictions for the Oscars? Check out our Oscars 2023 coverage and tweet us your hot tips @Cineworld.
The Oscar nominations are announced on January 24 and the ceremony gets underway on March 12.
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