2014 Golden Globes Live Blog

Once again Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are hosting the award show with the globes that are golden, ensuring that NBC will get at least a few more viewers who appreciate good comedy will watch. As always, the nominees for most of the larger categories are ridiculous (I’m looking at you Liev Schreiber for Ray Donovan) but hopefully at least a few deserving nominees will come away with the award. And if they don’t? Well I’ll just rant about it here.

The monologue begins with a greeting of “good evening to all the women and gay men watching at home.” I’ll try to hit on some of the best jokes. Tam Hunks is here as Amy apparently knew she was going to mess up on that difficult name to remember and pronounce. Tina speaking to Matt Damon: “Matt on every other night, in any other room, you would be a big deal, but tonight you’re just a garbage person.” ‘Explosion at the Wig Factory’ was the original title for American Hustle. Amy Poehler asks the cameras to get a shot of Amy Poehler and they cut to Jennifer Lawrence who has a good laugh about it. Tina describes Gravity as: “It’s the story of how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die then send one more moment with a woman his own age.” Poehler should make impersonating Scarlett Johansson her job as she tries to convince Tina that she was the voice of the computer in Her. Tom Hanks is still wearing his prosthetic genitals he got from Saving Mr. Banks.

Sandra Bullock and Tam Hunks present the first award of the evening for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture. In what comes as little surprise, Jennifer Lawrence comes away with the award for American Hustle and immediately thanks director David O. Russell for making her career what it is. As always she comes across as sweet and humble and yadda, yadda, yadda we all love her.

Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis present the second award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television and Jacqueline Bisset for Dancing on the Edge. She appears to be genuinely shocked, possibly drunk, as she accept the award. The music does its best to play her off but she Jacqueline isn’t having it. After a bit of swearing she finally gets around to thanking her friends and family. Unfortunately she probably just cost Tina and Amy a couple of jokes to fit the time constraint but wow that was something to watch. 

Next up in the “no surprise whatsoever category” is Behind the Candelabra winning for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. Yay? Getting another of the mini-series awards out of the way, Elizabeth Moss wins Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television for Top of the Lake. I haven’t seen TOL yet but I’m just going to go ahead and view this as a win for Peggy.

Fey and Poehler are back out and thanking the Associated Press for putting the whole event together, along with a bunch of ridiculously hard to pronounce names from the Foreign Press. Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie are out to introduce The Wolf of Wall Street but they’re accidentally given the wrong teleprompter lines, Margot adorably doesn’t want to improvise so someone is nice enough to bring out a paper with the right words on it. Aaron Eckhart and Paula Patton (wearing a comforter?) are out to give the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama. The award appropriately goes to Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad. Heisenberg getting his damn recognition! Get back on up there Cranston, Breaking Bad wins for Best Television Drama and all remains right in the world. Actually, I can’t complain about any of the award selections so far.

Philomena is a real person? Did not know that. Kate Beckinsdale, P-Diddy and Usher are out to present Best Original Score for a Motion Picture with the winner being Alex Ebert and his hair for All is Lost. Haven’t seen the movie yet but I’m happy for Roger’s son. Best Original Song for a Motion Picture goes to ‘Ordinary Love’ for Mandela. Great, all Bono needs is something else to pump up his ego…

Amber Heard and the interchangeable Chicago Fire hunks are out to present Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. Jon Voight unfortunately comes away with the award for Ray Donovan. Not a fan of Voight and very much not a fan of Donovan but hey they can’t get all the awards right…oh wait they can? Well, that’s a bummer. Robert Downey Jr. arrives to join the fun and he announces that no matter what name he calls from this envelope, he’ll leave tonight as a winner. Amy Adams very deservingly wins Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy for American Hustle. Such a fantastic movie and role, glad Amy got her due and that her daughter was able to teach her basic human emotions.

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick the Entertainer are the next presenters. Does Kevin Bacon have to do a six degrees joke every time he’s out in public now? Their daughter Sophie Bacon joins them and Tina Fey has brought her adult son Randy along too. Randy, played by Poehler, hilariously asks if Idris Elba is his real Dad. Robin Wright wins Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for House of Cards. She calls the Foreign Press a gaggle of characters and references Merrit Weaver’s great speech before heading off stage. Jim Carrey comes out and gives Shia LaBeouf a jab by making a plagiarism joke. After a clip of American Hustle Christoph Waltz is out to present the Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture and it goes to Jared Leto for his very transformative role in Dallas Buyers Club. If it’s body changing that is swaying the voters this year then that bodes well for Christian Bale and Matthew McConaghey.

Emma Thompson, who can probably do no wrong, comes out holding her heels and a glass of wine to present the award for Best Screenplay. Spike Jonze wins for Her; I want to see this movie so very bad. Julie Bowen and Seth Myers are out to present the award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series with the award going to Andy Samberg. I’m genuinely shocked but really happy Brooklyn Nine-Nine is getting some recognition. Hopefully this will all but assuredly lock the show into getting picked up for a second season.

Right out of commercial we get the winner for Best Foreign Language Film and The Great Beauty wins. The director pretty much does part two of the bit where Tina and my start listing off a bunch of insanely difficult names to pronounce. Poehler and Fey come back out to point out that Julia Louise Dreyfus has returned to the television section, now eating a hot dog. Melissa McCarthy and Jimmy Fallon are the next presenters, unfortunately a sandbag fell on Melissa’s head and she now thinks she’s Matt Damon. Michael Douglass wins Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series for Television or Something Like That for Behind the Candelabra. Congrats Douglass, but we don’t need the “cool guy pointing out hi other cool guy buddies” thing in your acceptance speech. You’re not a middle-schooler who just won for class treasurer.  


The award for Best Animated Feature Film and Frozen takes home the glory. Emilia Clarke and Chris O’Donnell are presenting the award for Best Actress in a Comedy and finally, FINALLY!, Amy Poehler wins for Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation. So long overdue, so happy for her. Hopefully the Emmys learn something from this and recognize her performance this year as well.

Emma Stone, who will be in Woody Allen’s next film, comes out to introduce the clips from Woody Allen’s 74 movies. Diane Keaton appropriately takes the stage to accept the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award for Woody. She gives a great Woody quote about how art can only truly measured by how impactful it is in the moment. Verging on the edge of creepy territory she sings a song about how she and Woody are friends forever, but she clearly had good intentions and did well by Allen.

Ben Affleck, last year’s winner for Best Director, is out to present the award to Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity.  It’s tough to argue this one as the directing had to be spot on for such an image-driven film. Gravity wasn’t the best movie of the year but Cuaron deserves the win for putting the spectacle together. Also, thanks to Sandra Bullock for not quitting the film after he threatened to give her herpes. "Michael Bay described our next presenters as... oh, um, sorry, can't do this." -Tina Fey. Chris Evans and Uma Thurman are next out of the gate, Best Comedy Series goes to Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Wow did anyone see this coming? If this doesn’t guarantee a second season I don’t know what will.

Two-time Golden Globe winner Jennifer Lawrence get to present the award for Best Actor in a Comedy and it goes to Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street. He pokes fun at the fact that he, and other very serious actors, are nominated in the “comedy” category because let’s face it, the Globes do it just so they can get more people to come to their little party. In related news, Leo still doesn’t have that Oscar.

Chris Hemsworth and some old racing dude (Nicky Lauda) take the stage to present a clip of Rush. Following them, Drew Barrymore comes out in her finest Easter dress to present the award for Best “Comedy” or Musical Motion Picture. The Golden Globe goes to American Hustle. I spoke earlier when Adams won for best supporting actress but this movie was easily my favorite of the year and it was certainly worthy of the win.

With 16 minutes remaining before 11:00, it’s looking like we’re going to be over on time. Leonardo returns to the stage to give Cate Blanchett the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for her role in Blue Jasmine. Cate thought the Magic Castle was weird compared to this, good thing she didn’t let Tobias Funke take her there. Jessica Chastain gets to give out the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Drama Series and McConaughey is going home a winner. Those Foreign Press guys love their weight-loss AIDS movies. Always fun to hear McConaughey do a Matthew McConaughey impersonation. And apparently he does a Borat “my wife” impression too.

The final award for the night is of course Best Motion Picture – Drama. Johnny Depp gets the honors to deliver the coveted award that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win Best Picture at the Academy Awards but is usually a pretty good indicator. In a tone that suggests he’d rather be watching a documentary about how paper plates are made, Depp announces the winner is 12 Years a Slave, which would also be my choice and prediction for The Oscars. It’s got everything you’d expect out of a “best picture” and it was brilliant to watch s no complaints here.

All-in-all I thought it was a much better than average Golden Globes. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler crushed it in the monologue and probably the biggest qualm I can gather is that there wasn’t more of them throughout the show. As far as the awards themselves go there were certainly a few that weren’t perfect but hey, at least Liev didn’t win for playing Ray. They finished on time and with the end of the show comes the end of my live-blog, thanks for reading it everyone! 

Saturday Night Live: “Bruno Mars”

I’m making an attempt to review a Saturday Night Episode so I’m going to preface this, similar to how Bruno Mars did in his monologue, by stating that I’m a little out of my element here. Although SNL is considered a TV show, it’s a whole different ballgame critiquing a structured, scripted show than it is to critique a collaboration of funny sketches and musical performances. So we’ll see how this goes and decide later if this should be a recurring segment.

Tonight we get double duty from Bruno Mars as he is both the host and musical guest. I don’t know a ton about Bruno going into this episode other than I've heard 6 or 7 of his songs and seen a couple of his music videos. Personally I’m not a fan of his but not so much in a way that I oppose everything he does. I’m just hoping SNL has enough wherewithal though to not put someone out there that can’t do anything comically.

Sketch One: Town Hall

We’re leading off, of course, with the town hall debate that took place on Tuesday. And also as predicted the undecided voters of New York are going to be the driving force of most of the jokes. This poor Jeremy kid gets poked at one more time, this time by Fred Armisen playing a 38 year old version of him. We get a great moment when Jay Pharoah’s Barack Obama asks: “Candy is he bothering you?” as Jason Sudekis’ Mitt Romney insists on talking about four more things. This is followed up by Taran Killam standing up and shouting: “Let me at him Dad.” And Mitt responding: “Sit down Tagg. Not now.” Then we get a superb surprise guest appearance from the great Tom Hanks and he asks his deeply profound and well thought out question: “Libya?” The debate escalates as Governor Romney hilariously begins pushing President Obama as he’s trying to speak. All in all I’d say they did a pretty good job with it, but I think there was some more untapped potential they didn't quite hit.
Grade: B

Monologue

Bruno at least makes it clear he doesn't deserve to be the host based on his lack of doing anything comedy or acting related. Make that blatantly clear. He breaks into song and dance about how unsure he is about performing on Saturday Night Live as host and at this point all this opening song is doing for me is reassuring my huge doubts that Bruno Mars should be doing just that. One lyric of the song actually relates this outing to that of Justin Timberlake who has also pulled double duty recently. You’re not even close to that status yet Bruno so stop putting the cart before the horse. Rough start here.
Grade: D-

Brad Pitt Commercials

There ended up being four Brad Pitt commercials for various products but I’m going to sum them all up here. I really love Taran Killam’s Brad Pitt so much and this was a fantastic way to incorporate that character. His first commercial is for Chanel Cologne where he describes it as “Pitt-ilicious.” Next up is the story of how Brad Pitt travelled across a seemingly endless desert to arrive at Taco Bell, home of the eloquent Dorito’s Loco Taco. Thirdly, Pitt is selling us “Dog Condoms” because our pets have every right to be freaky if they want to be. And finally, we see that Brad must be really hard up for some cash because he is now endorsing local tattoo remover: Doctor Zizmor.
Grade: B+

Sketch Two: Haters with Sunny Taylor Tompkins

“Don’t you boo me.” Bobby Moyhinan legitimately gets better every episode he’s on. “They are haters and they don’t know how to process all of this.” Says Moynihan as he’s points to his rump while dressed in drag. From this point on the sketch takes a big nose drive as the spoof of your typical trashy talk show doesn't have enough meat at its core to carry the side jokes. Also lets face it, it’s not much of a stretch having Bruno pull off looking like a woman…

Yikes

Grade: D+

Sketch Three: Pandora Radio

I really like the premise of this sketch. The power has gone down at the Pandora headquarters and some of the specific channels are going out one by one. The only person that can save the day is the intern Devin (Bruno Mars). Sudekis looks square in the eye and states: “Pandora is counting on you right now.” After that though it gets pretty light on humor and relies on Bruno having fun singing the songs for a wide array of different artists. Not the greatest sketch ever but at least they had a lot of fun with it.

Grade: B-

Sad Mouse

This had a very similar feel to it as the Digital Shorts. We see Bruno Mars playing a guy down on his luck and takes a job as a costumed mouse who has to wave at people on the street. I kind of really liked this, a lot. It had a weird, brilliant feel to it and I hope this is the new thing SNL does by making these little indie movie-like shorts. Plus it has a beautiful ending as Sad Mouse gets to find love with Sad Frog. Amazing!

Grade: A+

Music Break Number One

Bruno Mars sings “Locked out of Paradise” from his new album.

Tough to judge because I’m not a very big fan of Bruno so I’m a little biased. I will say that I’m glad he went with a highly upbeat song to keep the audience in it. Too often of late we've seen the musical performers pay a slow or deep song that kind of drains the crowd for the rest of the night.

Grade: C+

Weekend Update

Most of the jokes hit here like they usually do on Weekend Update however I was caught a little off guard by the sketchy joke about candidate’s skin color among rural voters. Something just wasn't right there and you could tell by the audience’s reaction as well. We also got a segment of great “Debate Do’s and Don’ts” which gave way to a rare Ruben Studdard reference. My favorite headline was for a new product that relieves the pain from burning your tongue or the roof of your mouth and as Seth Myers explains it as: “Finally a scientific alternative to WAITING A MINUTE!” And then. Making his first appearance of the season. Our favorite correspondent. Stefon! The gift that keeps on giving. Bill Hader completely lost it this time making the sketch even more hysterical. I’m so very happy. That had to have been the longest Stefon sketch to date and I’m not complaining.

Grade: A

Sketch Four: Merryville Haunted Castle

As a couple gets stuck on a carnival ride they slowly begin to realize that the singing robots may be alive and seeking their lives. Good idea to use Bruno in a sketch where he doesn’t have to talk as he plays one of the Merryville Brothers. And the robotic brothers really do creep me out in these sketches. This one also get the added of bonus Tom Hanks. He’s back. Robot Tom Hanks Trying to feel-up a girl is just hilarious. I don’t care who you are.

Grade: A

Sketch Five: Yeti Point

Too much Bruno here. The dramatic stare at the camera didn’t work from the start. The ending with Hader eventually being serenaded by our Yeti friend was the only salvation in this sketch gone wrong.

Grade: D-

Musical Break Number 2

Bruno Mars sings another new song “Young Girls” (I think that’s the name of the song) as we near the end of the show.

Like I said before, I don’t think he’s an atrocity to the music industry like many of the other big Pop performers of today, but he’s just not my guy.

Grade: C+

Under-underground Records

The final segment of the night is another addition of Under-underground Records, this time the “Donkey Punch the Ballot” edition. We get tons of great references here and funny combination names for people and places associated with politics and hip-hop.

Grade: A

I’d say that ended up being a pretty excellent episode for host Bruno Mars and musical guest Bruno Mars. The addition of Tom Hanks certainly didn't hurt but I wouldn't be opposed to Bruno getting another shot in the future.

First Saturday Night Live review is over! And that took forever. If I’m going to do more of these in the future I’ll have to figure out how to shorten them. Until then, SNL returns November 3 and it could be really great. Louis C.K. is hosting with musical guest Fun.

What did you guys think? Comments are always welcome.