Yesterday the Hollywood Foreign Press announced their nominations for the 68th annual Golden Globe awards. While some of the nominations seem like a no-brainer, others are a bit head-scratching and are making me think that they may need to rethink how some of the categories are structured so mainstream fare like "Red" and "The Tourist" aren't chosen to fill out the "Comedy" section of Best Movie nominations.

I never understood why the Golden Globes divides "Best Movie" into "Comedy/Musical" and "Drama" in the first place. First of all, actual comedies get screwed whenever a musical, however mediocre, comes out since the HFPA always seems to cream their pants whenever a musical is in contention for awards. Secondly, would you really classify Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland a comedy? Or the action movie The Tourist? The problem with splitting the main award into two categories is you end up trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill out the slots, and when that happens, you're left with one legit nomination (The Kids Are All Right, which I wouldn't classify as being an outright comedy so much as a "dramedy") and a bunch of crap serving as filler to round out the list.

It doesn't even seem like they adhere to a certain number of nominations, which makes padding the list of "Comedy" nominations all the more head-scratching. The Best TV Drama category has five selections, but Best TV Comedy has six. The head of the HFPA must be a huge Big Bang Theory fan and demanded that it squeak in as a contender.


The Best Actor and Actress categories are also split into Comedy/Musical and Drama, and you end up with such stellar picks as Emma Stone for Easy A and Johnny Depp for, once again, The Tourist (am I missing something here? Is The Tourist supposed to be pee-your-pants funny? Or is it more amusing how Angelina Jolie can only play one type of character, and that's why the movie is classified as a comedy?).

This isn't the People's Choice Awards, it's the Golden Globes. You're supposed to be celebrating the very best in cinema and television from the past year, not handing out as many nominations to Johnny Depp as possible because he's a household name and people like him as Captain Jack Sparrow. When you try to please both the film community/cinephiles and the mainstream public, this is what you end up with. It's the Golden Globes version of the Academy Awards' boneheaded decision to have 10 Best Picture nominations.

Are you happy with the Golden Globe nominations this year? Do you think the Best Picture and Actor/Actress categories should be combined, or should they remain split into Comedy/Musical and Drama?

Should the Golden Globes combine Comedy/Musical with Drama to create one category?