Ah, Paris. City of Light. Land of romance. Gobbler of all the best Golden Globe nominations.
Presented by overseas reporters based in Hollywood, the Globes may be a worldwide affair, but this time, they have a real French flair. The silent film The Artist, from French filmmaker Michel Havanavicius, led with six nominations Thursday, while the field includes Woody Allen's French romance Midnight in Paris and Martin Scorsese's Paris adventure Hugo.
Steven Spielberg has two nominees with French connections: the First World War epic War Horse, set partly in France's countryside, and the animated tale The Adventures of Tintin, based on comic-book stories created in France's neighbour, Belgium.
"Of course, the foreign press is going to like France," joked Seth Rogen, producer and co-star of the cancer tale 50/50, which has two nominations and no obvious French links.
War Horse and Hugo are up for best drama, along with two George Clooney films, the Hawaiian family story The Descendants and the political thriller The Ides of March the 1960s racial saga The Help and Brad Pitt's baseball tale Moneyball.
The Artist, 50/50 and Midnight in Paris are competing for the Globes' other best-picture prize — for a musical or comedy.
The Globes help narrow down prospects for the Academy Awards, whose nominations will come out on January 24. If The Artist earns a best-picture nomination then, it will be the first silent movie with a serious shot at Hollywood's top prize since the first year of the Oscars, for 1927-28, when the silent flicks Wings and Sunset took top honours.
"It's really strange and rare to not hear anything in the theatre," said The Artist star Jean Dujardin, a dramatic actor nominee for his role as a silent-era superstar whose career capsizes after talking pictures take over in the late 1920s.
Though it has virtually no spoken dialogue, the movie is anything but quiet. The film features clever sound effects and a gorgeous musical score that earned a Globe nomination for French composer Ludovic Bource.
