Drama Nomadland and satire Borat Subsequent Moviefilm won movie honors at the Golden Globes on Sunday, February 28 (March 1, Monday in Manila) in a mostly virtual bicoastal ceremony that was marked by pandemic conditions and calls for more diversity.

Nomadland, a moving drama about van dwellers in recession-hit America from Searchlight Pictures, also took the best director prize for Chinese-born Chloe Zhao. It made Zhao only the second woman to win at the Globes in that category, and the first woman director of Asian descent to win.

Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm from Amazon Studios was named best comedy movie actor, while Andra Day was a surprise winner for playing singer Billie Holliday in The United States vs Billie Holliday.

British royal drama The Crown, comedy Schitt’s Creek, and limited-series chess saga The Queen’s Gambit won the top awards in television.

Actors Emma Corrin, who played a young Princess Diana, Josh O’Connor, who played Prince Charles, and Gillian Anderson, who played Margaret Thatcher, in the Netflix royal series were also winners.

Netflix period drama Mank, about the screenwriter of Citizen Kane, had gone into Sunday’s show with a leading 6 nods but ended the night empty-handed.

Elsewhere, Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, whose death at 43 of an undisclosed battle with cancer stunned fans, won a posthumous best movie actor Golden Globe for his last performance in period jazz drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

British actors Daniel Kaluuya and John Boyega, and animated movie Soul were among other diverse winners chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which has been lambasted for having no Black people among its 87 members.

Members of the HFPA appeared on the show and pledged to do better.

The usual chummy gathering of A-listers at a gala dinner in Beverly Hills was replaced by webcams in the homes of mostly glammed-up celebrities, small physical audiences made up of masked frontline workers, and a skit about self-involved celebrities consulting doctors with their coronavirus concerns. – Rappler.com