No doubt echoing the sentiments of anyone who has seen "About Schmidt," a melancholy farce about a retiree on a roadtrip of self non-discover, Jack Nicholson accepted his award for Best Actor in a Drama at the Golden Globes last night by telling the audience, "I don't know whether to be happy or ashamed, because I thought we made a comedy!"
His win and another for the film's screenplay, by director Alexander Payne and frequent collaborator Jim Taylor, pushed the film into a higher stratosphere of Oscar contention going into the Academy Awards season. Meanwhile, Best Musical or Comedy honors for the super-cinematic musical adaptation "Chicago" and a Best Drama win for the Virginia Woolf-inspired "The Hours" catapulted those two films into front-runner positions for Best Picture nominations.
Those two films also garnered acting wins for "Chicago's" Renée Zellweger and Richard Gere (Best Actress and Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy) and for Nicole Kidman who was honored with Best Actress in a Drama for her portrayal of Woolf in "The Hours."
The evening's other multi-prize-winning film was "Adaptation," for which both Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep won supporting performer awards for their portrayals of a trailer-trash orchid expert and of Susan Orlean, author of "The Orchid Thief" -- the book "Adaptation" was originally supposed to be an adaptation of before screenwriter Charlie Kaufman got writer's block and turned it into a movie about a screenwriter trying to adapt Susan Orleans' "The Orchid Thief."
Because the Golden Globe Awards, handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, are handed out only a couple weeks before Oscar nominations are announced (February 11 this year), they have come to be considered a bellweather for the Academy Awards (which will be awarded on March 23).
Here is a complete list of winners in the motion picture categories.
"The Hours"
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Best PICTURE (comedy or musical)
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"Chicago"
Martin Scorsese,
"Gangs of New York"
Jack Nicholson,
"About Schmidt"
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Best ACTOR (comedy or musical)
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Richard Gere,
"Chicago"
Nicole Kidman,
"The Hours"
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Best ACTRESS (comedy or musical)
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Renée Zellweger,
"Chicago"
Chris Cooper,
"Adaptation"
Meryl Streep,
"Adaptation"
"About Schmidt," Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
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Best FORIEGN LANGUAGE Film
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"Talk to Her"
"Frida," Elliot Goldenthal
U2's "The Hands That Built America" from
"Gangs of New York"
