'Barbie' leads Golden Globe nominations with 9, followed closely by 'Oppenheimer'

The newest "Barbenheimer" battle: After competing at the summer box office, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” will again vie for supremacy at the 81st annual Golden Globes ceremony next month.

Greta Gerwig’s candy-colored “Barbie” led the way with nine nods while Christopher Nolan’s somber biopic, “Oppenheimer,” came close behind with eight when the Golden Globes nominees were announced live on “CBS Mornings” on Monday. Tying for third place were Martin Scorsese’s historical epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” and the Emma Stone-led fantasy “Poor Things” with seven nominations apiece.

The Globes also revealed two new categories: Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, and Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television.

More remarkable than the nominations, perhaps, was the fact that they were announced at all. After surviving decades of rumors and scandals, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — the shadowy keepers of the Globes — was recently undone by the revelation that it had no Black members. The outcry from Hollywood was deafening (Tom Cruise returned his three statues) and NBC dropped the ceremony for 2022. NBC returned earlier this year to broadcast the show on a one-time basis.  The group nominating and voting for the awards is now made up of a more diverse group of over 300 people from around the world.

That turned out to be the last of the Golden Globes as we knew them. Soon after, the HFPA was sidelined (it’s now a solely charitable organization) and the Globes were acquired by dick clark productions, which has traditionally produced the telecast. NBC is out, replaced by CBS, which will broadcast the 81st Golden Globes on Jan. 7. (The show will also be streamed on Paramount+).

One thing became clear during Monday’s nominee announcements: The Golden Globes haven’t yet lost  its reputation for eccentricity.

For starters, each category now has six nominees, up from five — except for the new category of Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, which has eight.  With echoes of the Oscars’ infamously scuttled “most popular” category, it includes many of the year’s top-grossing movies, such as “Barbie” and “Taylor Swift: Eras,” but it doesn’t seem to be simply a list of the top eight (“The Little Mermaid,” for instance, is absent). So are these movies also “cinematic” achievements? And is that the right way to describe a nominee like, say, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”?

As usual, the Globes’ mysterious logic resulted in several unusual choices — some brave, some baffling. “May December,” Todd Haynes’ moody drama about the aftermath of an age-inappropriate relationship, is nominated for best musical or comedy. “The Color Purple,” an actual musical, didn’t make the cut in that category, though two of its stars, Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks, earned acting nominations. The independent Sundance hit “Past Lives” earned five nods, more than the four for “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper’s Netflix-funded biopic of Leonard Bernstein. “Anatomy of a Fall,” a French-language thriller, also scored four nominations.

Films nominated for best motion picture drama included “Oppenheimer,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,”  “Maestro,” Celine Song’s “Past Lives,” Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”

In the best motion picture musical or comedy category, “Barbie” was joined by “Air,” “American Fiction,” “The Holdovers,” “May December” and “Poor Things.”

Best animated film nominees were "The Boy and the Heron," “Elemental,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Suzume” and “Wish."

"Succession” was the top-nominated television program, with nine nods including for series stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin.

With AP

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman