The TV Column

Red carpet gabfest ushers in casual Golden Globes

Jimmy Fallon hosts The 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards airing at 7 p.m. today on NBC.
Jimmy Fallon hosts The 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards airing at 7 p.m. today on NBC.

The 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards airs from 7 to 10 p.m. today on NBC. It should be a hoot.

True fanboys (and girls) can warm up with NBC's hourlong 2017 Golden Globe Arrivals Special at 6 p.m., featuring red carpet fashion and innocuous interviews ("Who are you wearing?") with celebrities inching their way toward the door.

Are you a real fan? Or maybe a bit of a masochist? You can start your day with E! Countdown to the Red Carpet from 3 to 5 p.m. on, naturally, E!, and follow that up with E! Live From the Red Carpet from 5 to 7 p.m. with co-hosts Giuliana Rancic and Ryan Seacrest.

The former promises "the ultimate guide to Golden Globes night with extensive entertainment insight and style scoop to prepare pop culture fans for television's most highly anticipated night," and the latter will be a more casual version of the NBC red carpet coverage taking place at the same time as "E! brings the real magic of the red carpet to pop culture fans around the globe."

At any event, if you start out with E!, you'll invest four hours of your life that you'll never get back before the three hours of the actual awards.

The awards, presented by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, will be held in the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. That's a venue with which I am intimately familiar because it was the location for a dozen of my Television Critics Association summer press tours.

I tell you this because there's one thing I know from personal experience. Unlike the more prestigious Academy Awards at Hollywood's cavernous Dolby Theatre (the erstwhile Kodak Theatre), the fun-loving Golden Globes crunch the celebrities around tables in a much more confined space, making for a more convivial and frequently raucous event.

The ballroom looks much larger on television, but it's really crammed for space. A-list celebs in the primo seats down on the lower dance floor have a fairly straight shot to the stage. Those relegated to the two upper tiers have a convoluted maze ahead of them to make it to the microphone.

Watch the fun as our host, The Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon, tries to reassure us he's not Ricky Gervais. The frequently unfiltered Gervais, who hosted last year and 2010-2012, is well known for his snarky and occasionally crude celebrity baiting.

In its grumpy review of Gervais last year, Time observed: "He was telling viewers at home they were stupid even to be watching."

My favorite hosts were Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who handled the chores with hilarious aplomb 2013-2015. But Fallon's a pro and I expect he'll do just fine.

The Golden Globes have taken on more prestige in recent years. I credit studio and network publicity mills. After all, the awards are decided by only about 90 foreign journalists based in Hollywood whose job is to sycophantically schmooze celebrities and watch TV and movies.

Who's up for an award? We'll skip over the movies because, as Amy Poehler noted in 2013, "Only at the Golden Globes do the beautiful people of film rub shoulders with the rat-faced people of television." My favorites are in bold face.

Drama: The Crown; Game of Thrones; Stranger Things; This Is Us; Westworld.

Actor, Drama: Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul; Rami Malek, Mr. Robot; Matthew Rhys, The Americans; Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan; Billy Bob Thornton, Goliath.

Actress, Drama: Caitriona Balfe, Outlander; Claire Foy, The Crown; Keri Russell, The Americans; Winona Ryder, Stranger Things; Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld.

Comedy/Musical: Atlanta; black-ish; Mozart in the Jungle; Transparent; Veep.

Actor, Comedy: Anthony Anderson, black-ish; Gael Garcia Bernal, Mozart in the Jungle; Donald Glover, Atlanta; Nick Nolte, Graves; Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent.

Actress, Comedy: Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep; Sarah Jessica Parker, Divorce; Issa Rae, Insecure; Gina Rodriguez, Jane the Virgin; Tracee Ellis Ross, black-ish.

Miniseries/Movie: American Crime; The Dresser; The Night Manager; The Night Of; The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

Actor, Miniseries/Movie: Riz Ahmed, The Night Of; Bryan Cranston, All the Way; Tom Hiddleston, The Night Manager; John Turturro, The Night Of; Courtney B. Vance, The People vs. O.J. Simpson.

Actress, Miniseries/Movie: Felicity Huffman, American Crime; Riley Keough, The Girlfriend Experience; Sarah Paulson, The People v. O.J. Simpson; Charlotte Rampling, London Spy; Kerry Washington, Confirmation.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Style on 01/08/2017

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