/ 9 January 2017

8 reasons to catch the Golden Globe awards tonight

Actor Donald Glover poses with his award during the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards.
Actor Donald Glover poses with his award during the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

By now you might have heard about how Meryl Streep won the internet after her provocative and emotional speech as she accepted the Cecil B DeMille lifetime achievement award at the 74th annual Golden Globe awards on Sunday evening. 

While arguably the best actress alive definitely stole the show during the 74th formulaic display of back pats and zealous thank yous, there were at least a dozen moments worth replaying.

  • Meryl Streep’s lifetime achievement award speech
    While the 67-year-old veteran didn’t win any awards for her hilarious portrayal of dreadful wartime aspiring opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins in a film of the same name, she reminded everyone who she is with an ode to the role of the actors, Hollywood and the press. Streep’s speech simultaneously highlighted the indispensability of “foreigners” in Hollywood’s pervasive stories while lambasting the xenophobic and “disrespectful” bully that currently sits in the highest office in the United States, all without mentioning his name and all with a broken voice. The six-minute speech is one for the history books.
  • Other actors reacting to Meryl Streep
    By far the most emotive facial expression as Meryl Streep took to the stage to accept the honour bestowed upon her belonged to singer and actor Janelle Monáe, who was overwhelmed with glee as she joined the chorus of slow clappers which included the teary Emma Stone and Amy Adams, Angela Basset, Priyanka Chopra and Denzel Washington and his wife, Pauletta. But the evening’s best applause came from Viola Davis, who stood in the shadows behind Streep, grinning and clapping like a very satisfied stan.
  • Viola Davis was simply breathtaking
    From her moving and theatrical introductory speech of who she called “Dame Streep” to her own acceptance speech after winning the best supporting actor in a motion picture award for Fences, Viola Davis and her yellow dress sparkled into the wanting hallways of acting royalty.
  • Moonlight’s moment
    A year after #OscarsSoWhite, some congregations on the internet are crying foul over musical La La Land’s sweeping of last night’s awards, taking issue with the fact that a “white film” featuring an all-white cast performing in the black musical genre of jazz has been overly-awarded, overshadowing Moonlight, one of the year’s best films. Moonlight is produced and directed by Barry Jenkins, and features an all-black cast which includes Naomie Harris. Despite being nominated six times, Moonlight took home the best picture: drama award, with the cast and makers filing the stage as Jenkins made an emotional tribute to, among others, his mother, whose life story the film partly borrows.
  • Dev Patel carrying Sunny Pawar before they introduced their film
    This minute-long moment of Patel holding eight-year-old, suit-clad Parwar, the little boy who plays his younger self in the highly-praised film, Lion, is the personification of adorable.
  • Tracee Ellis Ross finally getting an award
    Not that “firsts” are anything to be proud of these days, but this highly anticipated win was definitely one for fans of Black-ish and Ross’ long-running early 2000s sitcom Girlfriends. Ross, who plays Dr Rainbow Johnson in Kenya Barrish’s ABC comedy series, Black-ish, said: “It’s nice at 44,” not making a huge deal that she’s the first African-American woman to win a Golden Globe for a comedy series in 35 years
  • Donald Glover thanking all the black folks in Atlanta and Migos
    Veep is a fantastic show and it’s really hard to dislike Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but after years of winning almost every comedy award the show has been nominated for, it was starting to get boring to be as excited as fans were the first and second time the show won. It was thus a very welcome surprise that after just one season, first-time nominee Atlanta, Donald Glover’s original comedy series about an aspiring hip-hop star and his cousin’s hustle to make it big, won the award. The shock on Glover and his co-stars’ faces is priceless. If you’re yet to receive the audial blessing of the three wise Migos, you ought to rethink your choices in life. Glover took his acceptance speech as an opportunity to thank the rap group for doing a massive service to mankind: making the song, Bad and Boujee. He also shouted-out the people who made Atlanta a reality by saying “I really just want to thank Atlanta and all the black folks in Atlanta, like, for real. Just for being alive and being amazing people. I couldn’t be here without Atlanta.”
  • Evan Rachel Wood’s and Natalie Portman’s outfits
    These two definitely stole the red carpet look awards, with Woods channeling Yves Saint Laurent in a black and white tux and androgynous hair to match. Natalie Portman was her usual flawless self, wearing the sartorial spirit of Jackie O, who she plays in the film Jackie.

The 2017 Golden Globe awards will be re-screened tonight on M-Net channel 101 at 8.30pm