Boyhood wins best director and best film awards at Golden Globe Awards

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/11/boyhood-best-film-director-golden-globes

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Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel shared the best film awards at the Golden Globes in Los Angeles, as Hollywood’s award season kicked off on Sunday night.

In the television categories, The Affair won for best drama and Transparent won for best comedy.

Boyhood fended off competition from Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game, Selma and The Theory of Everything to take the best film drama, and best director award for Richard Linklater.

Related: 12 things we learned at the Golden Globes

The Grand Budapest Hotel pipped the heavily favoured Birdman, as well as Into the Woods, Pride and St Vincent, to win best musical or comedy.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, hosting for the third consecutive year, used the 72nd Golden Globes to poke fun at North Korea’s alleged involvement in the Sony hack, and Bill Cosby, who is mired in rape allegations.

Boyhood emerged as the night’s big winner, confirming it as frontrunner for next month’s Oscars. Other results split top honours among several films, underlining an unpredictable awards season.

Related: Golden Globes 2015: who won which awards

Linklater’s coming-of age opus, filmed over 12 years, also won globes for Patricia Arquette as best supporting female actor.

Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel prevailed in the comedy category after a year of slow-burning audience figures and critical acclaim.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman nabbed gongs for best screenplay and best actor in a comedy or musical for Michael Keaton, who plays a former action hero making a theatre comeback. He made one of the evening’s more poignant, if rambling, speeches.

Eddie Redmayne, as expected, won best actor in the drama category for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the second world war codebreaker Alan Turing, left empty-handed.

The civil rights drama Selma consoled itself with a globe for best original song – an award given added punch because it was presented by Prince in a surprise appearance.

Julianne Moore won best female actor for Still Alice, about a woman with early onset dementia, yielding disappointment for Jennifer Aniston, nominated for Cake, and Reese Witherspoon, for Wild.

Related: Golden Globes 2015 winners - in pictures

Amy Adams, star of Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, won best lead female actor for a musical or comedy, following up her Globe last year for American Hustle. And JK Simmons won best supporting actor in a motion picture for his performance in Whiplash. Leviathan, a grim take on modern Russia, won best foreign language film.

A recurring joke on the Beverly Hilton stage featuring Margaret Cho as a stern North Korean military officer prompted unease on Twitter, with some calling it crass and unfunny.

Related: The social media wins of the Golden Globes 2015

In a reference to the terror attacks on Charlie Hebdo and other targets in France Jared Leto declared: “Je suis Charlie”. George Clooney, given a lifetime achievement’s award, repeated the line and hailed the huge street demonstrations against the attacks, saying: “We will not walk in fear.”

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which organises the Globes, lacks the heft and gravitas of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Oscars. But the splashier, frothier event has gained clout and ratings, with almost 20m viewers last year. Some tune in to see TV stars.

The Affair’s victory as best TV drama series – plus a gong for Ruth Wilson as best female actor – underscored the HFPA’s reputation for rewarding new shows. It surprised critics who had tipped Netflix’s House of Cards.

After eight nominations, Kevin Spacey did, however, finally win a globe for his portrayal of House of Cards’ villainous vice-president Frank Underwood.

As expected, Transparent, an Amazon-produced series about a man who changes gender, won best comedy series, and a best actor award for Jeffrey Tambor, who dedicated his prize to the transgender community.

Maggie Gyllenhaal took best female actor in a miniseries or TV movie for The Honorable Woman. Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez, a first-time nominee, won best lead female actor in a comedy series, beating Veep’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Girls’ Lena Dunham and Orange is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling.

Related: Boyhood review – one of the great films of the decade | Peter Bradshaw

Matt Bomer won best supporting actor for HBO’s The Normal Heart and Joanne Froggatt won best supporting female actor for Downton Abbey’s fourth season.

Fargo, a TV series based on the 1996 Coen brothers’ film, bested True Detective to scoop best miniseries or motion picture made for television. Billy Bob Thornton won best actor in the same category.

Fey and Poehler, hosting what they said would be their final Globes, were less confrontational than predecessor Ricky Gervais, who mercilessly skewered stars, but they landed several zingers.

Recognising Arquette’s perfomance over Boyhood’s lengthy filming, Poehler said it showed there were still great roles for women over 40 – “as long as you get hired before you’re 40”.

In describing the film Into The Woods, the comedian drew cheers and gasps by alluding to allegations that Cosby drugged and raped women: “Cinderella ran away from her prince, Rapunzel was thrown from a tower … and Sleeping Beauty just thought she was getting coffee with Bill Cosby.”