Did this year's Golden Globes kick off awards season with a bang?

Awards season has returned once more with the annual kick-off event that is the Golden Globes.

Dedicated to celebrating the best of film and television around the world, there wasn't any one clear favourite heading into last night's ceremony. So, now that the statues have been handed out, who were the big winners, snubs and surprises?

Today on Commotion, entertainment reporter Teri Hart and Variety television critic Aramide Tinubu join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to provide a morning-after recap of the highs and lows from the 82nd annual Golden Globe Awards.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Teri, I've got to say, the Golden Globes desperately needed a shakeup. Last year, [the host] was the comedian Jo Koy, and it did not go well for Jo Koy. We don't talk about Jo Koy anymore. Talk to me about Nikki Glaser as a choice. Was it the right choice to bring in someone like Nikki for that role? 

Teri: Yes, I think she was actually perfect. I didn't know a lot about Nikki Glaser going into last night, so I had no expectations…. I was blown away with her. I thought that she struck the perfect tone. I know that people love the Ricky Gervais, you know, poking-fun-at-people — and Nikki Glaser did a bit of that, but she did it with people who weren't in the room. Like, she fired at Joker: Folie à Deux, and they obviously weren't in the room; that was part of her joke. There was a joke at Ben Affleck's expense. He wasn't in the room. So there's not that awkwardness when somebody sitting beside you or two tables away has just been kind of embarrassed when they're sitting there in a ball gown. 

I thought she did a really good job. "You're going to be Pope-ular," was really, really funny…. I want the whole song. And then she had this ratings board about, like, who was being thanked, and it really made me laugh. I just think she set the tone for what we want as a host. I think post-pandemic, a lot of these awards shows have been trying to figure out what this tone is. Is it irreverent? Is it reverent? ... all of those things. I thought Nikki Glaser came right up in the middle somewhere, and it worked. She looked like she was having a great time.

Elamin: She did. I honestly had a great time watching her. I think she landed all her jokes and that room felt very receptive to the jokes that she was showing up with. Aramide, the big story, I think, going into this year's Golden Globes is that there was no real specific story, right? There was no Oppenheimer-level that was like, "This is the movie that's going to crush the rest of the field." And it continues to be this really wide-open field, right? The Brutalist won for best motion picture drama. Netflix's Emilia Pérez won for best motion picture musical or comedy. How are you feeling about these choices, or what they maybe signify for the rest of the awards season?

Aramide: I really liked it, actually…. The Brutalist, specifically, and Emilia Pérez sort of gobbling up all of these awards alongside their TV counterpart Shōgun, I thought, was really fabulous because I just didn't see it coming. And I think it shows we're looking at a very different Oscar race than perhaps we thought.

[Nikki Glaser] was absolutely fabulous. I just really loved it because it wasn't so cut-and-dry. It mixed things up and it kept things sort of mysterious, so we don't really know what's going to come in March. I think that's sort of the beauty of what Globes is supposed to be. It's supposed to be chaotic, and fun, and glittery, and full of alcohol, and just we're getting back into it after the holiday season. It really showcased that people are actually looking at these films. You know, obviously Wicked is fabulous. I thought Wicked would take home a lot more awards; it didn't necessarily do that. It also shows the difference between what audiences are watching and what actual members of academies and critics are watching. I really like that division. It's making me rethink things a little bit.

Elamin: One thing I was interested in, Teri, is the speech that Brady Corbet gave when he won best picture for The Brutalist. He's the director of The Brutalist, and he gave this long speech about being told that this is an undistributeable movie because it's three and a half hours, and it's really important that we just let filmmakers explore the things that they want to explore and sort of push the boundaries that they want to push. Do you think The Brutalist's incredibly long runtime is going to be a hindrance in terms of its success at the Oscars? Because it is kind of billed as an Oscar favorite, but I'm just not sure that many people are going to show up for three hours and 35 minutes.

Teri: I think they will now. I think that this does change things. I think that people will pay attention to Brady Corbet and what he's done…. I usually tend to not like speeches read off phones, but when he won for best director, I thought that he was really great.

[The Brutalist] is worth seeing. It really is. It is a movie that is unlike most movie experiences that you're going to have. And isn't that a thrill, in 2025, to still have something new?

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.