But anyway, the last big film awards event before January is always the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations. The Golden Globes, for better or worse, are still one of the biggest predictors for potential Oscar nominees, and the nominations announced last week make the film awards season even more interesting and hard to predict.
The two films that will be going in to the Golden Globe Awards with the most nominations are Moulin Rouge and A Beautiful Mind, with six nominations each. Moulin Rouge already had a great deal of buzz from various critics honors, but this is the first real big push for Ron Howard's critically acclaimed Beautiful Mind, which is opening around the country right now, and may be slowly creeping up as the new major contender for Oscar consideration, especially with such other predicted heavyweights like Ali, The Shipping News, and others underperforming and failing to receiving unanimous critical acclaim.
I believe Ron Howard may finally get that Best Director nomination which has eluded him, and the film, its two stars, and its screenplay will most likely all be up for Oscar nominations. A Beautiful Mind is an absolutely incredible film, and seems to be the perfect epic human drama that the Academy may be looking for after the epic of Gladiator last year. And it's all possible that Russell Crowe will get his third nomination in a row, and could even win a second consecutive Best Actor Oscar. Still too early to make those kinds of predictions, but since so many of the other "prestige" productions are falling by the wayside in favor of smaller independent productions, it leaves A Beautiful Mind as the big Oscar winner.
Let's face it folks ... as brilliant and as inventive as it is, Mulholland Drive will not win a place in Oscar's top five, and even if it did, it would not be winning the top honor. In The Bedroom, while certainly having a much better shot at a Best Picture nod, is not "big" enough to take the Academy's top prize. I think it's safe to say that at this point anyway, A Beautiful Mind is the early favorite for top honors ... not the most nominations, but the most likely to win Oscar gold.
