VERLY HILLS – While known for recognizing laughs, the Golden Globe Awards took a few serious moments between the guffaws Sunday night, including honoring Michelle Williams as best actress in a comedy for My Week With Marilyn.
Paul Drinkwater, AP
'My Week with Marilyn': Michelle Williams thanks daughter Matilda and Marilyn Monroe.
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Paul Drinkwater, AP
'My Week with Marilyn': Michelle Williams thanks daughter Matilda and Marilyn Monroe.
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The wins sprinkled heartfelt moments between public and inside jokes among the stars.
"Oh, dear, gosh, I consider myself a mother first and actress second," Williams said onstage. She said she wanted to "thank my daughter, my little girl (Matilda), whose bravery and exuberance is the example I take with me in my work and my life."
PHOTOS: Fashion rules the red carpet
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Christopher Plummer took the first major award of the night for his role as a gay man in Beginners.
The thriller Homeland won for best dramatic television series, beating out American Horror Story and Game of Thrones.
The show kept it lively, as host Ricky Gervais lampooned the stars and stars lampooned each other.
While comedies rarely do well come Oscar time, the Globes remain one of the few award ceremonies to honor the genre, helping draw stars who wear either theatrical mask (as well as television stars, whose medium also gets feted).
It can turn stars into star gazers. "I just saw Morgan Freeman," Globe nominee Michael Fassbender (Shame) said before the awards. "He's the most amazing actor."
Globe regulars were less wide-eyed. Brad Pitt asked crew and press the score of the New York Giants-Green Bay Packers game (the Giants won).
"My team (the New Orleans Saints) lost," Pitt said, referring to Saturday's playoff game.
Football was a theme of the evening. Stacy Keibler, actress and girlfriend of multiple nominee George Clooney, spent the morning in the jersey of her hometown team, the Baltimore Ravens.
"I was in my jersey," she says. "The dog was in his Ravens jersey. We were watching football. Makeup was like, 'You've got to close your eyes.' "
Best-actress nominee Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) brought her parents as dates, and nearly all stars brought designer outfits for bragging rights.
"I need a driver's license to wear it," Elle Macpherson said of her Zac Posen gown. "I have a hard time driving it. It would be hard for a less experienced woman to wear it."
Not that the Globes see many folks inexperienced with flash bulbs and the press. Even the normally reserved Alexander Payne, director of The Descendants, sported pink earplugs on the red carpet.
Glenn Close, wearing a navy velvet Armani Privé, found another coat enviable: the one belonging to Uggie, the dog from The Artist, who roamed the red carpet.
"I think there should be more dogs on the red carpet," Close said. "I wish I could bring my Bill and Jake. We always get upstaged by children and dogs."
Paul Feig, director of the nominated film Bridesmaids, said the Globes create an unexpected competition: who can party harder.
"I'd like to think we are having a better time" than any cast, Feig said. "But it's a neck-and-neck race with The Help."
What about tickets when you've got an ensemble cast?
"It's tough," he acknowledged, adding that some stars of the ensemble had to watch from a viewing party upstairs.
The all-stars-under-one-tent strategy has turned the Globes into Hollywood's favorite dinner party and consolation prize. The atmosphere is decidedly more celebratory as the liquor flows, the barbs fly and stars mingle during commercial breaks and at a half-dozen after-parties.
It's given the ceremony cache in a town that surrenders it grudgingly. "This and the Oscars — those are the big ones," said Feig.
The revelry comes at a cost: The Globes have become less of a barometer of the Oscars than a break from them.
In the past seven years, only one Globes winner for best drama, and none for best comedy, have gone on to Oscar gold — 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, which won the academy's best-picture award. Last year, the Globes' best drama, The Social Network, fell to The King's Speech for the best-picture Oscar.
But this year's Globes could prove a better forecaster, as the raunchy comedy Bridesmaids is expected to be an Oscar contender in several categories, including best picture.
"Eventually, we are going to have to acknowledge that Bridesmaids is a film worth paying attention to," says Tom O'Neil, author of Movie Awards and columnist for the awards site GoldDerby.com. "We've been trying to ignore it for months."
The HFPA, which is made up of journalists representing international press outlets, remains a canny predictor in the acting categories. Last year's Globe acting winners — Colin Firth (The King's Speech), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), and Christian Bale and Melissa Leo (The Fighter) — would go on to collect acting Oscars.
Contributing: Andrea Mandell, Bryan Alexander and Claudia Puig
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Posted document.write(niceDate("1/16/2012 12:35 AM"));10h 38m ago | Updated document.write(niceDate("1/16/2012 12:47 AM"));10h 26m ago
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Jill Kennedy
Terrible show. Terrible organization. The Golden Globes mean nothing. They are a total joke. Ricky Gervais completely pulled his punches. He wants so badly to be part of the Hollywood click that he even has visited the same physical trainer that every other emaciated and creepy looking actress has visited. Let's face it - the Golden Globes is basically an organization that nominates people based on who they want to 'go to disco with'. The fact that the Academy Awards sort of mirror what they do is an absolute joke.
http://mankabros.com/blogs/onmedea/2011/12/15/the-hollywood-foreign-press-has-done-it-again-2/
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