Instructive triumphs at this year’s Golden Globes

CLOONEY. Lifetime achievement awardee.

In our view, the best thing about last Monday’s Golden Globe awards was the well-deserved victory of “Boyhood” as best dramatic film. Richard Linklater’s bright idea of sequentially shooting a boy’s growing-up story over 12 long years was a clear standout on point of exciting originality of concept and execution.

Consequently, Linklater also won the best drama director award, and Patricia Arquette was cited as best supporting actress.

Other acting awardees whose performances we’re eager to savor in full as soon as possible are Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” Julianne Moore in “Still Alice” and Michael Keaton in “Birdman.” Instructively, both Redmayne and Moore topbilled “medical” dramas, which proves the abiding power and appeal of that type of film over “healthier” protagonists’ own challenges!

Instructive sidelights of other “awarded” portrayals: Keaton “uglified” himself to impress and even shock viewers and jurors with his winning performance in “Birdman.”

Ditto for supporting actor JK Simmons (“Whiplash”) who portrayed a “monstrous” band conductor who terrorized and traumatized his musicians. Simmons has played many character roles before, but it was only when he depicted his character’s viciously despotic persona to the max that he finally won an award.

Lesson learned: If you want to excel and get awarded for it, choose to play an especially challenged and challenging character—and play him or her to the hilt!

With the victories of “Boyhood,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Still Alice,” “Whiplash,” “Birdman” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (best picture, comedy or musical), the Globes expressed a decided preference for relatively small, “alternative” films with a unique focus or “hook.”

We expect the Oscars’ choices to be more mainstream and populist—so, if this pans out, the line separating the two major movie awards shall have been more clearly drawn.

The victors in the TV categories were even more idiosyncratic: Imagine, the best sitcom trophy went to Amazon’s “Transparent,” which is about gender-bending mom-dads—or dad-moms! More: Showtime’s “The Affair” came out of nowhere to cop the award for best TV drama, and best comedy actress was a young newcomer, Gina Rodriguez (“Jane the Virgin”).

Where were the “reliable” winners of TV seasons past? With its clear preference for unusual shows and telecasting platforms, the Globes showed that, as far as television goes, the edgy future—is here.