Not that I’m able to work up a lot of interest in the Golden Globes’ yearly handouts–just a blip on the conscious monitor and they’re past me, like “huh?”–but, c’mon: “best actress (musical or comedy)” to Meryl Streep for her designing-woman shtick in The Devil Wears Prada? Could’ve played that role on automatic–just press the “imperious” high-attitude button and let your inner computer do the work–which I suspect for the most part is exactly what she did. Since in fact it wasn’t remotely close to being her best for 2006 even in the category of nomination: that would’ve been the country diva turn in A Prairie Home Companion, where ritual expectation took a backseat to creative stretching out: flighty and various with lots of quicksilver mood swings (just watch eyes and face flicker five or six different responses simultaneously in the middle of a song–it’s the stuff of pure frissons). Even so the real category winner should probably’ve been Helen Mirren in The Queen–who got her award instead for, ahem, “best actress (drama).” Well, I dunno … what’s telling the elk to shoo and all those fussbudgety microgestures, everything elusively droll, so cleverly en pointe? Real negative capability there–in fact, I’d never thought she had it in her!
