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California - When Hollywood gathers for the 72nd annual Golden Globes on Sunday night, real-world events may loom over what's usually one of the industry's most carefree and rollicking evenings.
The three-hour ceremony, which will be televised live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, beginning at 20:00 EST, comes on the heels of the deadly terrorist attack in Paris on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
It also follows Hollywood's own international incident over provocative parody: the hacking attack against Sony Pictures prompted by the Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy The Interview depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Yet Tina Fey and Amy Poehler can be counted on to exercise their right to free speech in the duo's third year in a row hosting the event. The night's Cecil B DeMille Award honouree, George Clooney, was also one of the movie industry's loudest voices clamouring for the release of The Interview after it was temporarily cancelled because of terrorist threats to attack theatres showing the film.
How much Hollywood is ready to laugh about the hacking scandal will be one of the night's story lines to watch, along with the stream of awards and the sometimes tipsy speeches by winners.
With a leading seven nominations, including for best picture, comedy or musical, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's backstage romp Birdman will rival Richard Linklater's 12-years-in-the-making Boyhood (five nods) and the Alan Turing World War II thriller The Imitation Game (also five nominations) for the night's dominant award-winner.
Thus far, Hollywood's award season has generally gone in favour of the critical darling Boyhood, but the season has featured a diverse bunch of candidates, albeit ones lacking major box-office draws. The civil rights drama Selma, the Stephen Hawking tale The Theory of Everything and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel are also heavily in the mix.
Led by Fey and Poehler, the Globes have been on a terrific upswing in recent years. Last year's awards drew 20.9 million viewers, the most since 2004. As the only major awards show to honour both movies and TV, the Globes have also benefited from television's rise.
This year, AMC's Fargo leads with five nominations, including best TV miniseries or movie. Hit HBO shows (Game of Thrones, Girls) will vie with Netflix entries (House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black), Amazon upstarts (Transparent) and network standbys (The Good Wife) for top TV honours.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of mostly freelance journalists that puts on the Globes, has lately cleaned up its reputation for idiosyncratic choices and awards swayed by celebrity. Last year, the HFPA chose the eventual Academy Awards best-picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, as best drama and American Hustle as best comedy.
