I awoke Monday morning to two surprises: snow on the ground (the first of the season) and the 2023 Golden Globe Award nominations being announced on the Today show. I thought we as a culture were collectively over the Golden Globes? It appears that the show’s banishment from broadcast was just a temporary measure – even more temporary than I may have expected.

Make no mistake, the Golden Globes have never been taken seriously as a validation of anything’s artistic worth. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has long been notorious for handing out nominations and awards to lightweight movies and TV series that didn’t deserve recognition. Despite this, the annual ceremony held at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles remained a TV broadcast staple through the decades, weathering regular ridicule over its choices, and even a bribery scandal or two.

Largely, that’s because the ceremony itself was typically a lot of fun, much lighter in tone than most of the self-important award shows of the season. The spectacle of watching huge swaths of Hollywood glitterati (from both the movie and TV sides of the industry) get tipsy on champagne and have a good time provided legitimate entertainment value, perhaps even more so during the years when comedian Ricky Gervais hosted the event and openly mocked the guests.

Back in 2010, I spoke at a conference in the Beverly Hilton ballroom. I won’t lie, it was a small thrill to stand on the same stage where so many major stars had been before.

The Globes’ reign came crashing down last year in the wake of boycotts centered on the HFPA’s lack of diversity among its voting body, which was almost exclusively comprised of old white men uninteresting in nominating anyone with skin darker than their own. Both NBC and Netflix pulled out of airing or streaming the 2022 awards. The HFPA then held a small, private ceremony and announced the winners in a press release, without any of the hoopla of a big gala event.

Even with promises of reform and re-organization, it felt like the public at large almost instantaneously lost all interest in the Golden Globes. I can’t say I know anyone who actually cared about the show’s cancelation earlier this year. The Globes are such a frivolous, unnecessary thing that the event’s absence was hardly even noted. Frankly, I don’t think the world missed out on much in being denied the opportunity to watch Nicole Kidman claim her trophy for that awful Being the Ricardos movie.

Nevertheless, the Globes are back. Apparently satisfied with the reform measures the HFPA enacted, NBC is back on-board to broadcast the 2023 ceremony in January. The latest nominations were announced on the Today show by actresses Selenis Leyva and Mayan Lopez, both from the network’s comedy Lopez vs. Lopez.

I won’t list out all of the nominations here, just those for the top movie and TV prizes. You can find the full list of nominees on the official Golden Globes web site.

Best Motion Picture – Drama

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Elvis
• The Fabelmans
• Tár
• Top Gun: Maverick

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
• Triangle of Sadness

Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Argentina, 1985
• Close
• Decision to Leave
• RRR

Best Motion Picture – Animated

• Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
• Inu-Oh
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
• Turning Red

I didn’t see many new moives in 2022. I didn’t go to the theater once this year, and don’t plan to before the calendar ends, either. Unlike some previous years, I don’t see any outright embarrassments among the various Best Motion Picture nominations. Most of them are very safe, uncontroversial choices.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is pretty awful, but it comes from a respected director and is made with some artistry, so the nod is at least understandable. I can’t imagine the Puss in Boots sequel is really award-worthy, but I’m not going to watch it to find out.

I feel like Top Gun: Maverick is too popcorn to stand in a Best Motion Picture category, but it’s hard to deny a movie that made so much money.

I had thought the Elvis bio-pic was widely panned, but it seems to have a high Rotten Tomatoes score, so I may just be letting my distaste for Baz Luhrmann color my memory.

Something tells me the Avatar nomination was locked before any of the voters actually saw it, if in fact they have even seen it yet. It’s not beyond the Globes to nominate a movie based only on marketing.

I don’t know whether RRR is classifiable in any traditional category. Is is Best? Is it Worst? I’m not sure. If there were a category for Most Motion Picture, I’d definitely put it there.

Best Television Series – Drama

• Better Call Saul
• The Crown
• House of the Dragon
• Ozark
• Severance

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy

• Abbott Elementary
• The Bear
• Hacks
• Only Murders in the Building
• Wednesday

Best Television Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television

• Black Bird
• Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story
• The Dropout
• Pam & Tommy
• The White Lotus

While I did watch a lot of television this year, I don’t have much to say about the HFPA’s TV nominations. I was underwhelmed with Wednesday, but didn’t dislike it. Most of the others (save perhaps Pam & Tommy, which I didn’t watch) were highly-regarded, quality shows. I expect Abbott Elementary to win the Comedy category, and it’s certainly not undeserving of it, but I’m rooting for Hacks.

I was a little puzzled at how The White Lotus could be lableled a “limited series” when the show has already aired two seasons with a third on the way, but my wife (who watches it) informs me that it’s sort of an anthology with new characters and a new setting each season.

The Golden Globes award ceremony will air on NBC and stream live on Peacock January 10, 2023. Whether its former audience will return with it remains to be seen.