2024 Golden Globes slugfest: Tariq Khan, Denton Davidson and Ray Richmond debate movie predictions [WATCH]
With the days turning into mere hours before the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Gold Derby senior editor Denton Davidson and news and features editor Ray Richmond met with Gold Derby’s resident encyclopedic awards expert Tariq Khan on Zoom this week to slug it out picking winners in the 15 film categories. They defend their own picks and trash the others. (Actually, not really. The truth is that the three of them agreed on more than they would have preferred.)
Davidson and Khan agreed with Gold Derby Users that “Oppenheimer” is the movie to beat in the Best Film Drama category. In fact, Khan believes there is literally a zero percent chance that it will lose. “The Globes rarely go against it when there is such a clear Oscar frontrunner,” he says. “It’s a worldwide sensation and one of the biggest movies of the year.” Watch their compelling discussion in full above.
The Golden Globes will be live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, airing Sunday on CBS and streaming Paramount+ at 5:00 p.m. PT/8:00 p.m. ET).
Disagreeing with Khan and Davidson is Richmond, who is picking the Martin Scorsese-directed epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” in a mild upset. “I feel like sometimes Globes voters are influenced by things like movie length, and the fact it’s nearly 3 1/2 hours works in its favor,” he emphasizes. “Also, the fact it deals with a horrible injustice done to Native Americans is going to help. I also enjoyed ‘Killers’ more just as a piece of pure entertainment.”
Davidson wonders how much the category will be impacted by the fact the category has three non-English films in “The Zone of Interest,” “Past Lives” and “Anatomy of a Fall.” “This says a lot to me about who is voting and how it could influence the results,” he says. “We also now have a larger voting body with the Golden Globes Association and the disbanding of the Hollywood Foreign Press as we knew it. I wonder how that will affect things.”
All three men see “Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone as something close to a lock for Best Film Drama Actress and “Poor Things” lead Emma Stone as something close to unbeatable for Best Film Comedy/Musical Actress. “I probably give Lily a 90 percent chance of winning,” Khan stresses. “I think Sandra Hüller (for “Anatomy of a Fall”) has a 10 percent chance in pulling off an upset. But Gladstone is where I think they’ll honor ‘Killers,’ because I don’t see it winning anything else.” Richmond sees Gladstone as close to unbeatable even though it’s been a particularly great year for actresses and there’s plenty of heavy competition, while Davidson thinks Stone is “far and away the favorite to win.”
On the men’s side, the three see Bradley Cooper as winning Best Film Drama Actor for “Maestro.” He’s overtaken Cillian Murphy for “Oppenheimer” in the Gold Derby voter race. “It’s that transformative performance, the makeup, it has everything that we think of when we think of Oscars,” points out Davidson, “like last year with Brendan Fraser and ‘The Whale’.” But Richmond cautions that he’s noted a backlash of sorts lately against “Maestro” for unclear reasons. Davidson thinks most backlashes he encounters are “garbage” that have no real impact on the race – and Khan agrees. “Normally when we hear about these things, it’s not real,” Khan believes. “I don’t think that even if there are some ‘Maestro’ detractors, I don’t think there are enough to stop Cooper in this race.”
They’re also in agreement that the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed “Poor Things” is going to win Best Comedy/Musical Film even though “Barbie” is the clear leader in the Gold Derby odds. Why? “Well, we already know that Emma’s a lock for actress for ‘Poor Things’,” Points out Khan, “and usually a lead performance winner, especially in the comedy/musical category, often wins the Best Picture category as well as was the case for Stone at the Globes in the ‘La La Land’ year. Same for Colin Farrell last year and his movie ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’.” Davidson notes that “Poor Things” is a divisive film on one level, with many people believing it goes a little too far and is shocking in its graphic sexuality. “But it’s also an international vote, and this (film) feels very European,” he says. “It feels almost like a foreign film in many ways, and I loved it.”
Richmond is picking “Poor Things” because he too loved it “and for Globes voters, it’s emblematic of a bold choice. And I see them honoring ‘Barbie’ with the new Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award, since it almost singlehandedly brought people back into theaters this past summer after all of the pandemic scares.” But Davidson cautions to watch out for “American Fiction” as an upset possibility in the category. “As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘This could be the ‘CODA’ of this year’,” he admits. “I think ‘The Holdovers’ is also in that category of movies that nobody is going to hate.”
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