Day: January 6, 2020

The 77th Golden Globes were meant to be a coronation for Netflix. Instead, a pair of big-screen epics took top honors Sunday, as Sam Mendes’ technically dazzling World War I tale “1917” won best picture, drama, and Quentin Tarantino’s radiant Los Angeles fable “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” won best film, comedy or musical.

The wins for “1917” were a surprise, besting such favorites as Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” (the leading nominee with six nods) and Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman.” Both are acclaimed Netflix releases but they collectively took home just one award, for Laura Dern’s supporting performance as a divorce attorney in “Marriage Story.” “The Irishman” was entirely shut out.

“1917” also won best director for Mendes. The film was made in sinuous long takes, giving the impression that the movie unfolds in one lengthy shot.

“I hope this means that people will turn up and see this on the big screen, the way it was intended,” said Mendes, whose film expands nationwide Friday.

Though set around the 1969 Manson murders “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” was classified a comedy and thus had an easier path to victory than the more competitive drama category. Brad Pitt won for best supporting actor, his first acting Globe since winning in 1996 for “12 Monkeys,” padding his front-runner status for the Oscars. Tarantino also won best screenplay.

“I wanted to bring my mom, but I couldn’t because any woman I stand next to they say I am dating so it’d just be awkward,” Pitt said.

Throughout the night, those who took the stage used the moment to speak about current events including the wildfires raging in Australia, rising tensions with Iran, women’s rights, the importance of LGBT trailblazers, even the importance of being on time.

Patricia Arquette, a winner for her performance in Hulu’s “The Act,” referenced the United States’ targeted killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying history wouldn’t remember the day for the Globes but will see “a country on the brink of war.” She urged all to vote in November’s presidential election.

Ricky Gervais, hosting the NBC-telecast ceremony for the fifth time, opened the show by stating that Netflix had taken over Hollywood, a fair appraisal given the streaming service’s commanding 34 nominations coming into the Globes. “This show should just be me coming out going: `Well done, Netflix. You win everything tonight,” he said.

As it turned out, he was wrong. Netflix won only two awards: Dern’s win plus one for Olivia Colman’s performance in “The Crown.” It was a definite hiccup for the streaming service, which is aiming for its first best-picture win at the Academy Awards next month.

Instead, the awards were widely spread out among traditional Hollywood studios, indie labels like A24, cable heavyweights like HBO and relative newcomers like Hulu.

Renee Zelleweger (“Judy”) took home best actress in a drama, as expected, notching her fourth Globe. But, as always at the Globes, there were surprises. Taron Egerton, a regular presence on the awards circuit this year, won best actor in a comedy or musical for his Elton John in “Rocketman” – an honor many had pegged for Eddie Murphy (“Dolemite Is My Name”).

Awkwafina, the star of the hit indie family drama “The Farewell,” became the first woman of Asian descent to win best actress in a comedy or musical. “If anything, if I fall upon hard times, I can sell this,” said Awkwafina, holding the award.

The winners were otherwise largely white, something the Globes have been criticized for before – including even in Gervais’ opening monologue, in which he called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association “racist.’’

No other category has been more competitive this year than that for best actor. Joaquin Phoenix won for his loose-limbed performance in the divisive but hugely popular “Joker” in a category that included Adam Driver (“Marriage Story”) and Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”). Phoenix gave a rambling speech that began with crediting the HFPA with the vegan meal served at the ceremony.

Michelle Williams, who won best actress in a limited series for “Fosse/Verdon,” stood up for women’s rights in her acceptance speech.

“When it’s time to vote, please do so in your self interest,” Williams said. “It’s what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them.’’

Dern’s best supporting actress award for her performance as a divorce attorney in “Marriage Story,” was her fifth Globe. Her win denied Jennifer Lopez, the “Hustlers” star, her first major acting award.

The first award of the night went to a streaming service series. Ramy Youssef won best actor in a TV series comedy or musical for his Hulu show “Ramy.” Best actor in a limited series went to Russell Crowe for the Showtime series “The Loudest Voice.” He wasn’t in attendance because of raging wildfires in his native Australia.

“Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate-changed based,” Crowe said in a statement read by presenters Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge followed up her Emmy haul by winning best comedy series and best actress in a comedy series. She thanked former President Barack Obama for putting “Fleabag” on his best-of-2019 list. With a grin, she added: “As some of you may know, he’s always been on mine.”

Waller-Bridge’s co-star Andrew Scott (of “hot priest” fame) missed out on the category’s supporting actor award, which Stellan Skarsgard took for HBO’s “Chernobyl.”

HBO was also triumphant in best TV drama, where the second season of “Succession” bested Netflix’s “The Crown” and Apple TV Plus’ first Globe nominee, “The Morning Show.” Brian Cox, the Rupert Murdoch-like patriarch of “Succession,” also won best actor in a drama series. “The Crown” took some hardware home, too, with Olivia Colman winning best actress in a drama series, a year after winning for her performance in “The Favourite.’’

Best foreign language film went to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” the Cannes Palme d’Or winning sensation from South Korea. Despite being an organization of foreign journalists, the HFPA doesn’t include foreign films in its top categories, thus ruling out “Parasite,” a likely best picture nominee at next month’s Oscars.

“Once you overcome the inch-tall-barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Bong said, speaking through a translator.

Tom Hanks, also a nominee for his supporting turn as Fred Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” received the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award. The Carol Burnett Award, a similar honorary award given for television accomplishment, was given to Ellen DeGeneres. She was movingly introduced by Kate McKinnon who said DeGeneres’ example guided her in her own coming out.

“The only thing that made it less scary was seeing Ellen on TV,” said McKinnon.

Hanks’ speech had its own emotional moment when he caught sight of his wife and four children at a table near the stage and choked up.

“A man is blessed with the family’s sitting down front like that,” Hanks said.

Elton John and Bernie Taupin won the evening’s most heavyweight battle, besting Beyonce and Taylor Swift. Their “I’m Gonna Love Me Again” won best song. “It’s the first time I’ve ever won an award with him,” Elton said of his song-writing partner. “Ever.’’

The Golden Globes, Hollywood’s most freewheeling televised award show, could be unusually influential this year. The roughly 90 voting members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have traditionally had little in common with the nearly 9,000 industry professionals that make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The HFPA is known for calculatingly packing its show with as much star power as possible, occasionally rewarding even the likes of “The Tourist” and “Burlesque.’’

Sunday’s show may have added to that history with an unexpected award for “Missing Link” for best animated feature film over films like “Toy Story 4” and “Frozen 2.” No one was more surprised than its director, Chris Butler. “I’m flabbergasted,” he said.

But the condensed time frame of this year’s award season (the Oscars are Feb. 9) brings the Globes and the Academy Awards closer. Balloting for Oscar nominations began Thursday. Voters were sure to be watching.

…

People gathered in Tehran on Monday to mourn top general Qassem Soleimani, as his replacement vowed to take revenge for the U.S. airstrike that killed him, and U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to hit Iranian cultural site if Iran does retaliate.

“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One late Sunday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to her Democratic colleagues that the House will vote this week on a war powers resolution “to limit the President’s military actions regarding Iran.”

“It reasserts Congress’s long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration’s military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days,” Pelosi wrote.

She called last week’s airstrike “provocative and disproportionate,” and said it endangered U.S. troops while escalating tensions with Iran.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Fox, “We’re now headed very close to the precipice of war,” adding “you just can’t go around and kill” world figures the U.S. opposes. “The president is not entitled to take us to war” without congressional authorization.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s Republican allies, said the president “did the right thing” and that his national security team is “doing a great job helping President Trump navigate Iranian provocations.”

Republican Congressman Mike Johnson also backed Trump, writing on Twitter, “Now we must remain united against Iranian aggression while praying and working for de-escalation.”

Trump tweeted Sunday that his social media posts “will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.  Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!”

Yale University law professor Oona Hathaway told VOA the president cannot notify Congress of his intent to go to war by tweet and said he would be breaking several laws.

“Any time the president involves the armed forces into hostilities, he must — at a minimum — notify Congress within 48 hours,” she said.

Hathaway added that a president is obligated to consult with Congress before putting the armed forces into any hostilities. She said a “disproportionate” response would break international law, which says any action taken in self-defense must be proportionate to the threat.

“That any of this has to be said suggests just how insane this situation has become,” Hathaway said, wondering where are the lawyers from the White House, Pentagon, and State Department.

Trump also told reporters Sunday he “may discuss” releasing the intelligence he used to justify ordering Soleimani’s death.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has so far refused to publicly share the evidence supporting the administration’s claim that Soleimani was planning imminent attacks on U.S. forces and officials in the Middle East.

“There are simply things we cannot make public,” Pompeo told Fox News. “You’ve got to protect the sources providing the intelligence.”

Trump claimed Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians, saying the longtime Iranian general “made the death of innocent people his sick passion” while helping to run a terror network that reached across the Middle East to Europe and the Americas.

Also Sunday, Iran said it is no longer limiting the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium — a virtual abandonment of the 2015 nuclear deal that had constrained its nuclear activity in return for sanctions relief.

“Iran’s nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion,” a government statement said.

Iraq’s Parliament to US Military: ‘Get Out’ video player.

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Iran did not make any explicit threats to build a nuclear weapon, something it has always denied it wants to do. It also said it will still cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran has been gradually stepping back from the commitments it made in the 2015 deal since U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. The European signatories — Britain, France, and Germany — have been urging Iran not to pull out.

Iraq has filed an official complaint with the United Nations secretary-general and the Security Council over the missile strike against Soleimani, which was carried out on Iraqi soil.

…

Five people were killed and about 60 were injured on the Pennsylvania Turnpike early Sunday morning, when a loaded bus went out of control on a hill and rolled over, setting off a chain reaction that involved three tractor-trailers and a passenger car.

The injured victims, ranging from 7 to 67 years old, are all expected to survive, though two patients remain in critical condition, authorities and hospital officials said Sunday afternoon. The crash, which happened at 3:40 a.m. on a mountainous and rural stretch of the interstate about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh, shut down the highway in both directions for several hours before it reopened Sunday evening.

The bus, operated by a New Jersey-based company called Z & D Tours, was traveling from Rockaway, New Jersey, to Cincinnati, Ohio, Pennsylvania State Police spokesman Stephen Limani told reporters.

He said the bus was traveling downhill on a curve, careened up an embankment and rolled over. Two tractor-trailers then struck the bus. A third tractor-trailer then crashed into those trucks. A passenger car was also involved in the pileup.

Photos from the scene show a mangled collision of multiple vehicles including a smashed FedEx truck that left packages sprawled along the highway.

“It was kind of a chain-reaction crash,” Limani said.

FedEx did not provide any other details besides that they are cooperating with authorities. A message seeking comment was left Sunday with the bus company.

Limani would not identify those killed or say which vehicles they were traveling in.

“I haven’t personally witnessed a crash of this magnitude in 20 years,” Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo told WTAE, calling it the worst accident in his decades-long tenure with the turnpike. “It’s horrible.”

Excela Health Frick Hospital in Mount Pleasant said it treated 31 victims, transferring a child and three adults to other facilities.

Hospitals brought in teams of social workers and psychologists to deal with the mental trauma, said Mark Rubino, president of Forbes Hospital, which treated 11 victims.

“The people coming in were not only physically injured but they were traumatized from a mental standpoint as well,” he said. Most were covered in diesel fuel when they arrived. The hospital treated fractured bones, brain bleeds, contusions, abrasions and spinal injuries.

The victims included students and people returning from visiting family in New York City. Many traveling on the bus were from outside the United States, Limani said, some of whom do not speak English and who lost their luggage and passports in the wreckage.

The Tribune-Review reported Leticia Moreta arrived at a hospital about 11:30 a.m. to pick up her children — Jorge Moreta, 24, and Melanie Moreta, 16 — who were on the bus.

She said her children, returning from visiting their father in New York, were in stable condition.

“I was devastated,” she said.

Exactly what caused the crash remains unknown, and Limani said it could take weeks or months to determine. The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team to investigate.

Officials said it was too early to determine if weather was a factor in the crash.

Angela Maynard, a tractor-trailer driver from Kentucky, said the roads were wet from snow but not especially icy. Maynard was traveling eastbound on the turnpike when she came upon the crash site and called 911.

“It was horrible,” she told The Tribune-Review. She saw lots of smoke but no fire. She and her co-driver found one person trapped in their truck and another lying on the ground.

“I tried to keep him occupied, keep talking, until medical help arrived,” Maynard said. “He was in bad shape. He was floating in and out of consciousness.”

The crash left families terrified and scrambling.

“I was crying,” said Omeil Ellis, whose two brothers were on the bus. “I was like crazy crying. I’m still hurt.”

Ellis, from Irvington, New Jersey, told The Tribune-Review that his brothers were traveling to Ohio for work. He was planning to meet them a few days later. But both of his brothers, one of them 39 years old and one 17, were sent to hospitals.

“I’m just weak right now,” he said.

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The Golden Globes are famously unpredictable, but a few sure things seem to be in store for Sunday’s awards: Streaming services will play a starring role; five-time host Ricky Gervais will snicker at his own jokes; and Brad Pitt is all but assured of taking home an award.

Plenty of question marks remain for the 77th Golden Globe Awards, though. Will Jennifer Lopez score her first Globe? Who will win best song in the face-off between Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Elton John? Just how many “Cats” jokes are too many?

Stars began arriving Sunday at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, ahead of the ceremony, which is due to start at 8 p.m. EST and be broadcast live on NBC. Among the standouts on the red carpet was, predictably, Billy Porter. The “Pose” star, who made such an impression at last year’s Oscars, arrived in a gleaming white suit with a long feather train that needed an assistant to carry it.

Whatever the cat drags in Sunday, the Golden Globes — Hollywood’s most freewheeling televised award show — should be entertaining. But they also might be unusually influential.

The roughly 90 voting members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have traditionally had little in common with the nearly 9,000 industry professionals that make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The HFPA is known for calculatingly packing its show with as much star power as possible, occasionally rewarding even the likes of “The Tourist” and “Burlesque.”

But the condensed time frame of this year’s award season brings the Globes and the Academy Awards closer. Balloting for Oscar nominations began Thursday and ballots are due on Tuesday. Voters will be watching.

Netflix comes into the Globes with a commanding 34 nods — 17 in film categories and 17 in television categories. Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” leads all movies with six nominations, including best film, drama. Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” with five, is up for the same category. The box-office smash “Joker” may be their stiffest competition.

The path is more certain for Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” which is competing in the comedy or musical category. It could easily take home more trophies than any other movie, with possible wins for Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio — a 12-time Globes nominee and three-time winner — and Tarantino’s script. Tarantino is also up for best director, though he faces formidable competition in Scorsese and “Parasite” filmmaker Bong Joon Ho.

The dearth of nominations for female filmmakers has stoked more backlash than anything else at this year’s Globes. Only men were nominated for best director (just five women have ever been nominated in the category), and none of the 10 films up for best picture was directed by a woman, either.

Time’s Up, the activist group that debuted at the black-clad 2018 Globes, has been highly critical of the HFPA for the omission, calling it “unacceptable.”

Last year, eventual Oscar best picture winner “Green Book” took best comedy, while “Bohemian Rhapsody” unexpectedly won best drama. This year, one of the likely best picture nominees at the Academy Awards wasn’t eligible. Despite being an organization of foreign journalists, the HFPA doesn’t include foreign films in its top categories, thus ruling out the South Korean sensation “Parasite.”

On the TV side, series like “Fleabag,” “The Crown,” “Succession” and “Chernobyl” are among the favorites. The recently launched Apple TV Plus also joins its first major awards show with “The Morning Show,” including nominations for both Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.

The show will be watchable beyond the traditional NBC broadcast. With a cable or satellite TV login, the three-hour show can be streamed on NBC.com or on Hulu (with live TV), YouTube TV, Sling TV or PlayStation Vue. The official red carpet will be streamed on Facebook, beginning at 6 p.m. EST.

Last year’s telecast, hosted by Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh, held steady in TV ratings, averaging 18.6 million viewers. Along with the returning Gervais, scheduled presenters include Tiffany Haddish, Will Ferrell and last year’s best actress winner, Glenn Close.

Tom Hanks, also a nominee for his supporting turn as Fred Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” will receive the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award. The Carol Burnett Award, a similar honorary award given for television accomplishment, will go to Ellen DeGeneres.

…