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'Oppenheimer' dominates Golden Globes as 'Poor Things' upsets 'Barbie' in comedy

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'Oppenheimer' dominates Golden Globes as 'Poor Things' upsets 'Barbie' in comedy

This image released by CBS shows Emma Stone accepting the award for best female actor in a motion picture for her role in “Poor Things” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024.

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This image released by CBS shows Emma Stone accepting the award for best female actor in a motion picture for her role in “Poor Things” during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024.

Sonja Flemming/AP

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer dominated the 81st Golden Globes, winning five awards including best drama, while Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein riff Poor Things pulled off an upset victor over Barbie to triumph in the best comedy or musical category.

If awards season has been building toward a second match-up of Barbenheimer, this round went to Oppenheimer. The film also won best director for Nolan, best drama actor for Cillian Murphy, best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. and for Ludwig Göransson’s score.

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“I don’t think it was a no-brainer by any stretch of the imagination to make a three-hour talky movie — R-rated by the way — about one of the darkest developments in our history,” said producer Emma Thomas accepting the night’s final award and thanking Universal chief Donna Langley.

Along with best comedy or musical, Poor Things also won for Emma Stone’s performance as Bella, a Victorian woman experiencing a surreal life and sexual awakening.

“I see this as a rom-com,” said Stone. “But in the sense that Bella falls in love with life itself, rather than a person. She accepts the good and the bad in equal measure, and that really made me look at life differently.”

Lily Gladstone won best actress in a dramatic film for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Gladstone, who began her speech speaking the language of her native tribe, Blackfeet Nation, is the first Indigenous winner in the category.

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“This is a historic win,” said Gladstone. “It doesn’t just belong to me.”

The Globes were in their 81st year but facing a new and uncertain chapter. After a tumultuous few years and heaps of scandals, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was dissolved, leaving a new Globes, on a new network (CBS), to try to regain its perch as the third biggest award show of the year, after the Oscars and Grammys. Even the menu (sushi from Nobu) was flipped.

“Golden Globes journalists, thank you for changing your game, therefore changing your name,” said Downey in his acceptance speech.

It got off to a rocky start. Host Jo Koy took the stage at the Beverly Hilton International Ballroom in Beverly Hills, California . The Filipino American stand-up hit on some expected topics: Ozempic, Meryl Streep’s knack for winning awards and the long-running Oppenheimer. (“I needed another hour.”)

After one joke flubbed, Koy, who was named host after some bigger names reportedly passed, also noted how fast he was thrust into the job.

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“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue?” said Koy. “I wrote some of these and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”

This image released by CBS shows host Jo Koy during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024.

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This image released by CBS shows host Jo Koy during the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024.

Sonja Flemming/AP

Hi, Barbie

Downey’s win, his third Globe, denied one to Kenergy. Ryan Gosling had been seen as his stiffest competition, just one of the many head-to-head contests between Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. The filmmakers faced each other in the best director category, where Nolan triumphed.

It was two hours before Barbie, the year’s biggest hit with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales, won an award. Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For? took best song, and swiftly after, Barbie took the Globes’ new honor for “cinematic and box office achievement.” Some thought that award might go to Taylor Swift, whose Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour also set box-office records.

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Margot Robbie, star and producer of Barbie, accepted the award in a pink gown modeled after 1977’s Superstar Barbie.

“We’d like to dedicate this to every single person on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on Earth: the movie theaters,” said Robbie.

Barbie and Oppenheimer, two blockbusters brought together by a common release date, also faced off in the best screenplay category. But in an upset, Justine Triet and Arthur Harari won for the script to the French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. Later, Triet’s film picked up best international film, too.

Though the Globes have no direct correlation with the Academy Awards, they can boost campaigns at a crucial juncture. Oscar nomination voting starts Thursday, and the twin sensations of Barbenheimer remain frontrunners.

Other contenders loom, though, like Poor Things and The Holdovers.

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Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph both won for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Giamatti, reuniting with Payne two decades after Sideways, won best actor and Randolph won for her supporting performance as a grieving woman in the 1970s-set boarding school drama.

“Oh, Mary you have changed my life,” Randolph said of her character. “You have made me feel seen in so many ways that I have never imagined.”

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron won best animated film, an upset over Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

“Succession” and “The Bear” lead TV winners

The final season of Succession cleaned up on the television side. It won best drama series for the third time, a mark that ties a record set by Mad Men and The X-Files. Three stars from the HBO series also won: Matt Macfadyen, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin.

“It is bittersweet, but things like this make it rather sweeter,” said Succession creator Jesse Armstrong.

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Hulu’s The Bear also came away with a trio of awards, including best comedy series. Jeremy Allen White won for the second time, but this time he had company. Ayo Edebiri won her first Globe for her leading performance in the Hulu show’s second season. She thanked the assistants of her agents and managers.

“To the people who answer my emails, you’re the real ones,” said Edebiri.

Ayo Edebiri poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actress in a television series, musical or comedy for “The Bear” at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.

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Ayo Edebiri poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actress in a television series, musical or comedy for “The Bear” at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.

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Beef won three awards: best limited series as well as acting awards for Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.

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The Globes also added a new stand-up special award. That went, surprisingly, to Ricky Gervais, who didn’t attend the show he so often hosted. Some expected Chris Rock to win for Selective Outrage, his stand-up response to the Will Smith slap.

The Globes comeback

A few years ago, the Golden Globes were on the cusp of collapse. After The Los Angeles Times reported that the HFPA had no Black members, Hollywood boycotted the organization. The 2022 Globes were all but canceled and taken off TV. After reforms, the Globes returned to NBC last year in a one-year deal, but the show was booted to Tuesday evening. With Jerrod Carmichael hosting, the telecast attracted 6.3 million viewers, a new low on NBC and a far cry from the 20 million that once tuned in.

The Golden Globes were acquired by Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions, which Penske Media owns, and turned into a for-profit venture. The HFPA (which typically numbered around 90 voters) was dissolved and a new group of some 300 entertainment journalists from around the world now vote for the awards.

Questions still remain about the Globes’ long-term future, but their value to Hollywood studios remains providing a marketing boost to awards contenders. (The Oscars won’t be held until March 10.) This year, because of the actors and writers strikes, the Globes are airing ahead of the Emmys, which were postponed to Jan. 15.

With movie ticket sales still 20% off the pre-pandemic pace and the industry facing a potentially perilous 2024 at the box office, Hollywood needed the Golden Globes as much as it ever has.

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Andy Richter

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Andy Richter

Andy Richter has found his place.

The Chicago area native previously lived in New York — where he first found fame as Conan O’Brien’s sidekick on “Late Night” — before moving to Los Angeles in 2001. Three years ago, he moved to Pasadena. “Now that I live here, I would not live anywhere else,” he says.

There are some practical benefits to the city. “I am such a crabby old man now, but it’s like, there’s parking, you can park when we have to go out,” Richter says. “The notion of going to dinner in Santa Monica just feels like having nails shoved into my feet.”

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In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

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But he mostly appreciates that Pasadena is “a very diverse town and just a beautiful town,” he says.

For Richter, most Sundays revolve around his family. In 2023, the comedian and actor married creative executive Jennifer Herrera and adopted her young daughter, Cornelia. (He also has two children in their 20s, William and Mercy, from his previous marriage.)

Additionally, he’s been giving his body time to recover. Richter spent last fall training and competing on the 34th season of “Dancing With the Stars.” And though he had no prior dancing experience, he won over the show’s fan base with his kindness and dedication, making it to the competition’s ninth week.

He hosts the weekly show “The Three Questions” on O’Brien’s Team Coco podcast network and still appears in films and TV shows. “I’m just taking meetings and auditioning like every other late 50s white comedy guy in L.A., sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.”

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This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

7:30 a.m.: Early rising

It’s hard for me at this advanced age to sleep much past 7:30. I have a 5 1/2-year-old, and hopefully she’ll sleep in a little bit longer so my wife and I can talk and snuggle and look at our phones at opposite ends of the bed, like everybody.

Then the dogs need to be walked. I have two dogs: a 120-pound Great Pyrenees-Border Collie-German Shepherd mix, and then at the other end of the spectrum, a seven-pound poodle mix. We were a blended dog family. When my wife and I met, I had the big dog and she had a little dog. Her first dog actually has passed, but we like that dynamic. You get kind of the best of both worlds.

8 a.m.: Breakfast at a classic diner

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Then it would probably be breakfast at Shakers, which is in South Pasadena. It’s one of our favorite places. We’re kind of regulars there, and my daughter loves it. It’s easy with a 5-year-old, you’ve got to do what they want. They’re terrorists that way, especially when it comes to cuisine.

I’ve lived in Pasadena for about three years now, but I have been going to Shakers for a long time because I have a database of all the best diners in the Los Angeles metropolitan area committed to memory. There’s just something about the continuity of them that makes me feel like the world isn’t on fire. And because of L.A.’s moderate climate, the ones here stay the way they are; whereas if you get 18 feet of winter snow, you tend to wear down the diner floor, seats, everything.

So there’s a lot of really great old places that stay the same. And then there are tragic losses. There’s been some noise that Shakers is going to turn into some kind of condo development. I think that people would probably riot. They would be elderly people rioting, but they would still riot.

11 a.m.: Sandy paws

My in-laws live down in Long Beach, so after breakfast we might take the dogs down to Long Beach. There’s this dog beach there, Rosie’s Beach. I have never seen a fight there between dogs. They’re all just so happy to be out and off-leash, with an ocean and sand right there. You get a contact high from the canine joy.

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1 p.m.: Lunch in Belmont Shore

That would take us to lunchtime and we’ll go somewhere down there. There’s this place, L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, in Belmont Shore. It’s fantastic for some pizza with grandma and grandpa. It’s originally from Naples. There’s also one in Hollywood where Cafe Des Artistes used to be on that weird little side street.

4 p.m.: Sunset at the gardens

We’d take grandma and grandpa home, drop the dogs off. We’d go to the Huntington and stay a couple of hours until sunset. The Japanese garden is pretty mind-blowing. You feel like you’re on the set of “Shogun.”

The main thing that I love about it is the changing of ecospheres as you walk through it. Living in the area, I drive by it a thousand times and then I remember, “Oh yeah, there’s a rainforest in here. There’s thick stands of bamboo forest that look like Vietnam.” It’s beautiful. With all three of my kids, I have spent a lot of time there.

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6:30 p.m.: Mall of America

After sundown, we will go to what seems to be the only thriving mall in America — [the Shops at] Santa Anita. We are suckers for Din Tai Fung. My 24-year-old son, who’s kind of a food snob, is like, “There’s a hundred places that are better and cheaper within five minutes of there in the San Gabriel Valley.” And we’re like, “Yeah, but this is at the mall.” It’s really easy. Also, my wife is a vegetarian, and a lot of the more authentic places, there’s pork in the air. It’s really hard to find vegetarian stuff.

We have a whole system with Din Tai Fung now, which is logging in on the wait list while we’re still on the highway, or ordering takeout. There’s plenty of places in the mall with tables, you can just sit down and have your own little feast there.

There’s also a Dave & Buster’s. If you want sensory overload, you can go in there and get a big, big booze drink while you’re playing Skee-Ball with your kid.

9 p.m.: Head to bed ASAP

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I am very lucky in that I’m a very good sleeper and the few times in my life when I do experience insomnia, it’s infuriating to me because I am spoiled, basically. When you’ve got a 5 1/2-year-old, there’s no real wind down. It’s just negotiations to get her into bed and to sleep as quickly as possible, so we can all pass out.

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Video: Prada Peels Back the Layers at Milan Fashion Week

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Video: Prada Peels Back the Layers at Milan Fashion Week

new video loaded: Prada Peels Back the Layers at Milan Fashion Week

At Milan Fashion Week, Prada showcased a collection built on layering. For the models, it was like shedding a skin each of the four times they strutted down the runway, revealing a new look with each cycle.

By Chevaz Clarke and Daniel Fetherston

February 27, 2026

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Bill Cosby Rape Accuser Donna Motsinger Says He Won’t Testify At Trial

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Bill Cosby Rape Accuser Donna Motsinger Says He Won’t Testify At Trial

Bill Cosby
Rape Accuser Says Cosby Won’t Take Stand At Trial

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