December

67th Golden Globes Nominations Announced

Category Movie Tie-Ins, News and EventsNo tags

(Source: Official Website of the Golden Globes Award)

I love watching award shows – though most of the time, being Astro-less, I’ll have to wait till the re-runs are on other channels. Or yes, I could just keep up with the news on the internet. So, it was with excitement that I found out that the nominations for the 67th Golden Globe Awards were announced recently. I’d scroll down the entire list and have my ”ooohs” and “aaaahs” upon seeing my favourites being nominated (again).

With trepidation, I also look out for a selection of books to read – especially those that have been adapted into movies. I prefer adaptations (book to movie) more than novelisations (movie to book). It’s fascinates me to watch see how creatively a movie could be visualised on the big screen based on a thin book or condensed into just two hours of viewing from a thick book that took us days and weeks to devour.

I’ve narrowed down some of the movies that have have related tie-ins:

1. Best Movie Title:

Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire
- An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl’s horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father’s child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary. The movie stars Best Actress nominee and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe and Best Supporting Actress nominee Mo’nique.
Up in the Air by Walter Kirn
- Ryan Bingham’s job as a Career Transition Counselor (he fires people) has kept him airborne for years. Although he despises his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls “Airworld”. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss’s desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious firm, Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal: 1 Million Frequent-Flyer Miles. The movie stars Best Actor nominee George Clooney and Best Actress nominees Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga.
James Cameron’s Avatar
- In the futuristic world of James Cameron’s Avatar, a young man named Jake becomes part of an exploration team on the planet Pandora, inhabited by the exotic Na’vi. Scientists have created an avatar—a body that looks like a Na’vi but is operated by a human’s consciousness. When in his avatar body, Jake finds himself drawn to the planet’s way of life. But before the Na’vi will accept him as one of their own, he has to pass a series of fantastic and dangerous tests. Can Jake survive long enough to become a full-fledged Na’vi? And will he ever want to live as a human again?

2. Best Performances by an Actress in a Movie

Emily Blunt for A Young Victoria
- Born in 1819, Victoria was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent. Left fatherless at the age of 8 months, her early years were difficult, brought up by her overbearing German mother and ambitious advisor, Conroy. Succeeding to the throne at 18, however, she began a triumphant reign where her first decree was to banish her mother and Conroy to a remote palace apartment. Yet, history and this movie, will reveal that her journey at the monarch towards her happy ending, was not all smooth sailing. The rest of the cast includes Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany and Miranda Richardson.
Carey Mullingan for An Education
- When the journalist Lynn Barber was 16, she was picked up at a bus-stop by an attractive older man who drew up in his sports car – and her life was almost wrecked. A bright confident girl, on course to go to Oxford, she began a relationship which, incredibly, was encouraged by her conventional, suburban parents and which took her into the louche, semi-criminal world of west London just as the 1960s began. Ruin beckoned, until one day she made an important discovery.
Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side
- This true-life sports drama tells of a man, born to a crack-addicted mother; who takes up American football and school, after a rich Republican family plucks him from the mean streets and adopts him. Their love is the first great force that alters the world’s perception of the boy and the second force is the evolution of professional American football into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. The boy, who took on the name Michael Oher turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed and agility necessary to guard the quarterback’s greatest vulnerability: his blind side. Directed by John Lee Hancock, the movie also stars Tim McGraw, Kathy Bates and Quinton Aaron.

3. Best Performances by an Actor in a Movie

Colin Firth for A Single Man
- This movie is based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood. Set in Los Angeles in 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, it is the story of a British college professor (Colin Firth) who is struggling to find meaning to his life after the death of his long time partner. The story is a romantic tale of love interrupted, the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition, and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life.
Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart
- Bad Blake has been a big star, but he has not recorded in five years. He is 57 and now has a chance for a last show and a last chance at love. But can he stop living the blues, give up the booze, put three bad marriages behind him and form a new relationship? The movie also stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall.

4. Best Motion Picture – Musical Or Comedy

Julie and Julia
- Based on 2 memoirs, this movie is adapted (written for the screen and directed) by Nora Ephron. The brilliant Julia Child (Meryl Streep) woke America with the pleasures of good cooking wtih her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking and tv show. In 1948, when she newly landed in France, Julia soaked herself in the local culture – buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu – that eventually led her to her success as a cook, teacher and writer. Meanwhile, in New York, Julie Powell regularly finds herself weeping on the way home from her boring job. Then one night, she notices that the few items she grabbed from a Korean grocery store are the same ingredients, as described by Julia Child, to make Potage Parmentier. And so, “The Project” is born. Julie cooked all 524 recipes in the book, within one year and realises that this deranged Project is changing her life. The richness of the thousands of sauces she slaves over is beginning to spread into her life, and she begins to find the joy of life that has been missing for many years.

5. Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture

Matt Damon for The Informant!
- Based on a gripping true account written by Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant is Mark Whitacre, a senior executive with America’s most powerful food giant, who put his career and his family’s safety at risk to become a confidential government witness. Using Whitacre’s secret recordings and a team of agents, the FBI uncovered the corporation’s scheme to steal millions of dollars from its own customers. But as the FBI closed in on their target, they suddenly realised that Whitacre wasn’t quite playing the game they’d thought. He double-crossed both the authorities and his employers in one of the most extraordinary cases of global corporate corruption in the last 30 years.
Michael Stuhlbarg for A Serious Man
- The book is written by Christopher Isherwood and is set in 1967. Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him, his unemployable brother Arthury is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is shirking school, and his daughter is filching money from his wallet. Also, a graduate student is trying to bribe him for a passing grade while threatening to sue him for defamation. His search for some kind of equilibrium is conveyed with humor, imagination and verbal wit by the Coen brothers. Julianne Moore is the nominated best actress for this comedy.
Robert Downey Jr. for Sherlock Holmes
- Sherlock Holmes first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based “consulting detective”, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, astute observation, deductive reasoning and forensic skills to solve difficult cases. In this movie, Holmes and his assistant, Dr. Watson must hunt Lord Blackwood resumes his killing spree. Contending with Dr. Watson’s new fiancée and a dimwitted head of Scotland Yard, Holmes must unravel the clues to the mystery through a twisted web of murder, deceit, black magic and the deadly embrace of temptress, Irene Adler.

6. Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Matt Damon for Invictus
- Based on a true story, Matt Damon plays the captain of South Africa’s rugby team (Springboks), Francois Pienaar, who joined forces with Nelson Mandela to help unite their country. Then, newly-elected Mandela believed that he can bring his people together, through the universal language of sports. He rallied Pienaar’s rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championships match. The men shared one goal with the motto, “One team, One Country”.
Stanley Tucci for Lovely Bones
- Lovely Bones paints a painful picture of a girl, who was raped and murdered, and now watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. Stanley Tucci plays the George Harvey, the man, who killed Susie Salmon.

The winners of the Golden Globes will be announced on 17th January 2010, and the awards are usually used as a marker – the run-up to the prestigious Oscars (Academy Awards). 2009 saw the success of Vikas Swarup’s Slumdog Millionaire become an overnight sensation when it won the Oscar for Best Movie. Perhaps another author is crossing his/her fingers that he/she made the right choice to have his/her book turn into an award-winning movie.