British pictures and talent dominated the 70th Golden Globe Award nominations, which were announced this morning at The Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. Comedies The Best Exotic Hotel and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Tom Hooper’s musical Les Miserables each gained a nomination in Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. They will be competing against Silver Linings Playbook and Moonrise Kingdom in the same category.
Salmon Fishing in The Yemen, also earned two nominations in the Best Performance by An Actor and Actress in Comedy or Musical for British actors Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt respectively. Two dames, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, joined Blunt in the same category, which also included Meryl Streep (Hope Springs) and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook).
Ewan McGregor will be competing against Jack Black (Bernie), Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables) and Bill Murray (Hyde Park On Hudson).
British actors were also featured in the Drama section of the Golden Globes nominations. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) led the nominations in the Best Performance by An Actor, which also included Richard Gere (Arbitrage), John Hawkes (The Sessions), Joaquin Phoenix (The Master) and Denzel Washington (Flight), while a third dame, Helen Mirren (Hitchcock), and Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea) were joined by Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone) and Naomi Watts (The Impossible) in the Best Performance By An Actress in A Motion Picture.
There were no surprises in the Best Motion Picture in the drama section, which included Spielberg’s Lincoln, Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Ben Affleck’s Argo, and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Each one of the above pictures also garnered a nomination for Best Director and Best Screenplay, except Life of Pi, which lost to the script of Silver Linings Playbook.
Django Unchained also took two nominations in the Best Performance By An Actor in A supporting Role for Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. They were joined by Alan Arkin from Argo, Philip Seymour Hoffman from the Master and Tommy Lee Jones from Lincoln.
The nominations in The Best Performance by Actress in A Supporting Role category were bestowed on Nicole Kidman (Paperboy), Amy Adams (The Master), Sally Field (Lincoln), Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables) and Helen Hunt (The Sessions).
British pop star Adele lead the nomination in the Best Original Song for Skyfall in the recent Bond movie. She was joined by Keith Urban (For You – Act of Valour), Jon Bon Jovi (Not Running Anymore – Stand Up Guys), Claude-Michel Schonberg (Suddenly – Les Miserables) and Taylor Swift (Safe & Sound – The Hunger Games).
Counting nominations per movie this year reveals that Lincoln is the frontrunner with 7 nods, followed by Argo and Django Unchained, both of which have 5 nods.
The Golden Globes also honours TV in similar categories, namely it splits the awards into Drama and Comedy/musical. Like in Films, the TV nominations were dominated by British talent.
British series, Downton Abbey, which won the Golden Globes last year, gained 3 nominations including in the Best Television Series – Drama alongside Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, The Newsroom and Breaking Bad; and in The Best Performance by an Actress in Television Series – Drama for Michelle Dockery, who will be competing against Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife), Claire Danes (Homeland), Glenn Close (Damages) and Connie Britton (Nashville); and in The Best Performance By An Actress In a Supporting Role for Dame Maggie Smith, who was joined by fellow Brit Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife), Sarah Paulson (Game Change), Hayden Panettiere (Nashville) and Sofia Vergara (Modern Family).
BBC drama The Hour was honoured with a nomination in the Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television alongside Game Change, The Girl, Hatfields and McCoys and Political Animals.
In the same category, Brit Sienna Miller received a nod for Best Performance By an Actress for her role as Tippi Hedren in The Girl. She was joined by Nicole Kidman (Hemingway & Gellhorn), Jessica Lange (American Horror Story: Asylum), Julianne Moore (Game Change) and Sigourney Weaver (Political Animals). In the meantime, Miller’s co-star Toby Jones earned a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor, as Alfred Hitchcock. He will be competing against fellow Brits Clive Owen (Hemingways & Gellhorn) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), and Woody Harrelson (Game Change) and Kevin Costner (Hatfield & McCoys).
British Actor Damian Lewis (Homeland) led the nominations in the Best Performance By an Actor in Television – Drama, which also included Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom).
Musical Smash and Comedies The Big Bang Theory, Episodes, Girls and Modern Family each won a nomination in the Best Television Series – Comedy or Musical.
Tina Fey (30 Rock) and Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation), who will be hosting the Golden Globe awards show next month, were among the nominees in the Best Performance by An Actress in a Television series, which also included Lena Dunham (Girls), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) and Zooey Deschanel (New Girl).
The Golden Globe Awards are the most important awards in the film industry after the Oscars. They are voted for by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is composed of 90 Hollywood-based journalists, who represent international media outlets. The awards will be announced at the Golden Globe Awards show, which will be broadcast live in the US on NBC on 13 January, 2013.