Awards Season: Golden Globes and Critics Choice Nominees Announced
It's fair to say that the Golden Globes have never been the most respected of awards. The event itself has always seemed as much of an excuse for a piss-up featuring Hollywood A-listers than a serious celebration of achievement. In the time since the last ceremony, however, the Globes have been mired in controversy surrounding the secretive Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organisation responsible for holding the awards. The HFPA has promised to clean up their act, and the nominations for the 2022 ceremony have been announced.
The Best Motion Picture, Animated nominees have typically trended towards the more mainstream and commercial. ignoring the international and independent features that have been celebrated elsewhere. In recent years this has begun to change and films such as Mirai, My Life As A Zucchini (aka My Life As A Courgette) Wolfwalkers and The Breadwinner have been nominated. Typically, the winners have matched the Oscar of the same year- notable exceptions being Missing Link, The Adventures Of Tintin and Cars.
In the 2022 nominees for the category, there is a hat-trick of nominees produced by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Animation Studios has two nominations with Raya And The Last Dragon up against the more traditional Encanto. Pixar rounds out the trio with Enrico Casarosa's Luca. The two remaining spots are taken up by foreign-language features.
Jonas Poher Rasmusse's animated documentary Flee has been picking up nods all over, and can now add a Golden Globe nomination to that growing pile. The final slot goes to Czech director Michaela Pavlátová's My Sunny Maad. The two films are connected in a rather intriguing way: Flee features the trials and tribulations of a refugee from Afghanistan who comes to Europe, while My Sunny Maad features a European woman moving to Afghanistan.
These two features have been nominated over numerous higher-profile, mainstream Studio films, but the most notable omission is surely The Mitchells Vs The Machines, which is expected to be a major force in the Awards season this year.
Encanto has gate-crashed outside of the animation category, scoring two more nominations, both for music. Germaine Franco is nominated for Best Score and Dos Oruguitas from Lin-Manuel Miranda is nominated for Best Original Song.
The nominations have also been announced for the Critics Choice Awards. The Critics Choice Association's picks for the Best Animated Feature award are almost identical to the HFPA's, only in their case The Mitchells Vs The Machines is nominated instead of My Sunny Maad. Again, animated films have managed to make a splash outside the animated ghetto. There's another Best Original Song nomination for Encanto's Dos Oruguitas, while Flee is also in the running for Best Foreign Language Film.
The 27th Critics Choice Awards will take place on January 9, 2022 and will be broadcast live on CW and TBS. The 79th Golden Globe Awards are scheduled to take place on the same night, although its usual broadcaster NBC is declining to broadcast the ceremony.
