--- description: Three near-certainties for Academy award night: Julianne Moore will be named Best Actress, J.K. Simmons will win Best Supporting Actor… and, with all those little movies in competition, hardly anyone will watch title: Oscar Race 2015: Nominations for Golden Globes Help to See the Future image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt02dad9bb027dffd2/69876e46e53aba6d464d67ca/still-alice.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # The Oscar Crystal Ball Gets Clearer With the Golden Globes Nominations by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Dec 11, 2014 7:41 PM CUT  Julianne Moore stars as Alice Howland in Still Alice Julianne Moore stars as Alice Howland in Still AliceSony Pictures by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Dec 11, 2014 7:41 PM CUT The Oscar nominations won’t be announced until Jan. 15, but on this Golden Globes day we can make an educated guess about some of the finalists for major Academy Awards. Actor: Steve Carell for _Foxcatcher_, Benedict Cumberbatch for _The Imitation Game_, Michael Keaton for _Birdman_, David Oyelowo for _Selma_ and Eddie Redmayne for _The Theory of Everything_. Actress: Felicity Jones for _The Theory of Everything_, Julianne Moore for _Still Alice_, Reese Witherspoon for _Wild_ and two others. Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette for _Boyhood_, Meryl Streep for _Into the Woods_ and three others. Supporting Actors: J.K. Simmons for _Whiplash_ and four other guys who don’t stand a chance against the prohibitive front-runner. And Best Picture: _Birdman_, _Boyhood_, _Foxcatcher_, _The Grand Budapest Hotel_, _The Imitation Game_, _Selma_, _The Theory of Everything_ and one or two others. How do we know this — given that, in Hollywood, [“Nobody knows anything”](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/457097-nobody-knows-anything-not-one-person-in-the-entire-motion "undefined")? Because in the first two weeks of Dec., three different kinds of groups have handed out their year-end awards or nominations. First are the critics, who know what they like but don’t care whether the Motion Picture Academy agrees with them. Of the seven critics societies that have named their favorites so far, five chose _Boyhood_ as the No. 1 film; Keaton, Simmons and Arquette were consensus winners in three of the four acting categories; and Marion Cotillard dominated in Best Actress for two films, the American _The Immigrant_ and the Belgian _Two Days, One Night_. Cotillard, with her potential vote split between two little-seen films, is the longest of long shots to be Oscar-nominated. Then there are the industry professionals, notably the Screen Actors Guild, whose membership significantly overlaps the Academy voters. SAG announced its nominees Wed., citing all the actors we named in the top paragraph plus a couple of surprises: Jennifer Aniston as a chronic-pain sufferer in _Cake_ and Jake Gyllenhaal as the creepy newshound in _Nightcrawler_. (“Yaaay for Jake!” says this critic.) The nominees for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, SAG’s version of the Best Picture Oscar, were _Birdman_, _Boyhood_, _The Grand Budapest Hotel_, _The Imitation Game_ and _The Theory of Everything_ — but not _Foxcatcher_ or _Selma_. That isn’t a death notice to those two moves, as the Academy’s Best Picture category allows for as many as 10 nominations. (The list of SAG nominations is [here](http://www.sagaftra.org/nominations-announced-21st-annual-screen-actors-guild-awards%C2%AE "undefined").) Finally we have two organizations of uncertain provenance but past masters at throwing star-studded awards parties: the National Board of Review and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The NBR, which has been around since 1909 with a membership of New York-based film lovers, went a little nuts this year and chose the period melodrama _A Most Violent Year_ as Best Film, with the movie’s Oscar Isaac sharing the Actor citation with Keaton, and Moore taking Actress. Much more attention goes to the HFPA, a collection of L.A.-based showbiz reporters, not critics. Theirs are the only nominations announcements besides the Oscars that are broadcast live on national news shows, and their profligate list of nominees — 30 actors for movies, 40 for TV shows — makes their annual televised banquets a celebrity magnet. (The list of Golden Globe nominations is [here](http://www.goldenglobes.com/2015%5F72nd%5FGolden%5FGlobes%5FNominees "undefined").) At the Globes, Moore will be competing with herself, in a way: she’s nominated for her dramatic role as the early-Alzheimer’s victim in _Still Alice_ and, in the Comedy or Musical category, for her gung-ho turn as a desperate actress in _Maps to the Stars_. Three nominees got their nominations by doing it the hard way: Witherspoon toted a backpack that weighs more than she does; Aniston ditched her trademark glamour to play a grumpy frump; and Helen Mirren, in _The Hundred-Foot Journey_, affected a preposterous French accent. With the exception of 11-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis as the star of _Annie_, the rest of the HFPA’s Actress nominees play wives of various demeanors: Jones and Rosemund Pike (_Gone Girl_) in the Drama category, and Amy Adams (_Big Eyes_) and Emily Blunt (_Into the Woods_) in Comedy or Musical. A couple dozen more critics groups will weigh in over the next few weeks. Then other industry guilds, from cinematographers to hair stylists, will hand out their own prizes — all in anticipation of Oscar night on Feb. 22\. We have one solid prediction for that show too: virtually nobody will watch it. Oscar broadcasts get their highest ratings when the chief contenders are box-office champions. Over the past two decades, the show scored some of its highest numbers in years dominated by such blockbusters as _Titanic_, _The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King_ and _Avatar_. Last year, audiences could root for big hits like _Gravity_ and _American Hustle_. This year, no movie likely to secure a Best Picture nomination has earned so much as $60 million at the domestic box office; _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ pulled in $59 million. Mind you, some films haven’t officially opened yet, and others could build popular momentum through the awards season. But the list of early winners in critics groups and top nominees for SAG and the Globes reads like candidates for the Independent Spirit Awards: niche titles of a serioso bent, made for critics and other bestowers of awards, less so for the mass audiences that bring the industry its annual $11-billion bounty. The tone of the leading contenders is less High Hollywood than off-Broadway and _Masterpiece Theatre._ Remember that, five years ago, the Academy expanded the Best Picture category because the previous year’s biggest hit, Christopher Nolan’s widely acclaimed _The Dark Knight_, didn’t make it into the top five. This time, in an affirmative-action push for “real movies,” voters might actually push _Gone Girl_, or Nolan’s _Interstellar_, onto the Best Picture not-so-shortlist, just to include one or two pictures that a lot of people saw. But it will still mostly be a night for films that made only the vaguest impression on the mass market mindscape. No Marvel movie, no Bilbo Baggins, no Harry Potter. If only J.K. Simmons had been in a movie written by J.K. Rowling. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3629727/golden-globe-nominations-2015/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3629727/golden-globe-nominations-2015/"},"headline":"The Oscar Crystal Ball Gets Clearer With the Golden Globes Nominations","datePublished":"2014-12-11T19:41:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T02:46:20.624Z","description":"Three near-certainties for Academy award night: Julianne Moore will be named Best Actress, J.K. 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