LOS ANGELES: Cold War spy series “The Americans” and animated movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” carried off Golden Globe awards on Sunday in a mostly politics-free ceremony where nice triumphed over nasty.
Michael Douglas was named best television comedy actor for playing an aging acting teacher in “The Kominsky Method,” while Richard Madden was a first time winner for British television thriller “Bodyguard.”
Hosts Andy Samberg and “Killing Eve” nominated actress Sandra Oh opted for a positive vibe in their opening remarks, in contrast to the political barbs and sharp jokes, often directed at US President Donald Trump, that have marked recent awards shows.
Oh joked they were chosen as Globes hosts “because we are the only two people left in Hollywood who haven’t got in trouble for saying anything offensive.”
“Bradley Cooper — you are hot!,” said Oh, calling out the “A Star is Born” actor and director.
“Hey Jeff, I wish you were my dad,” quipped Samberg, addressing actor Jeff Bridges, who will be presented later on Sunday with a lifetime achievement award.
On a more serious note, Asian actress Oh paid tribute to the plethora of Golden Globe-nominated films and TV shows featuring black and Asian actors and directors, including “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Black Panther” and “BlacKkKLansman.”
“I wanted to be here to look out into this audience and witness this moment of change, ” she said. “Right now this moment is real. Because I see you ... all these faces of change. And now so will everyone else.”
The Golden Globes kicks off the countdown to the Oscars in February, and the remake of “A Star is Born” went into Sunday’s ceremony with five nominations, including two for Cooper as actor and director.
Pop star Lady Gaga, sporting old-school glamor plus blue hair on the red carpet, is the front-runner for a best drama actress Golden Globe for her role in the movie — her first as a lead actress.
She also looks certain to take home the award for best original song, for her hit single “Shallow,” while “A Star is Born” is a strong contender for the top Golden Globe of best drama film.
But there is stiff competition from box-office hits “Black Panther,” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which stars Rami Malek in an acclaimed performance as late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. Despite being musicals, both “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star is Born” are competing in the more prestigious drama race.
Political comedy “Vice” got the most Golden Globe nominations — six — but the film’s scathing portrait of former US Vice President Dick Cheney has proved divisive among both audiences and film critics.
However, Christian Bale’s performance as Cheney is favored to beat Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Mary Poppins Returns“) and Viggo Mortensen (“Green Book“) as best movie comedy actor on Sunday.
A strong line-up of comedies and musicals also includes “Crazy Rich Asians” and bawdy historical movie “The Favourite,” starring British front-runner Olivia Colman.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant, additional reporting by Lisa Richwine and Nichola Groom, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
’The Americans’ wins TV Golden Globe in politics-light show
’The Americans’ wins TV Golden Globe in politics-light show
- Pop star Lady Gaga, sporting old-school glamor plus blue hair on the red carpet, is the front-runner for a best drama actress Golden Globe for her role in the movie — her first as a lead actress
Filipinos master disaster readiness, one roll of the dice at a time
- In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon
MANILA: In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon.
The teenagers huddled around the table leap into action, shouting instructions and acting out the correct strategies for just one of the potential catastrophes laid out in the board game called Master of Disaster.
With fewer than half of Filipinos estimated to have undertaken disaster drills or to own a first-aid kit, the game aims to boost lagging preparedness in a country ranked the most disaster-prone on earth for four years running.
“(It) features disasters we’ve been experiencing in real life for the past few months and years,” 17-year-old Ansherina Agasen told AFP, noting that flooding routinely upends life in her hometown of Valenzuela, north of Manila.
Sitting in the arc of intense seismic activity called the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” the Philippines endures daily earthquakes and is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
In November, back-to-back typhoons drove flooding that killed nearly 300 people in the archipelago nation, while a 6.9-magnitude quake in late September toppled buildings and killed 79 people around the city of Cebu.
“We realized that a lot of loss of lives and destruction of property could have been avoided if people knew about basic concepts related to disaster preparedness,” Francis Macatulad, one of the game’s developers, told AFP of its inception.
The Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST), where Macatulad heads business development, first dreamt up the game in 2013, after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines and left thousands dead.
Launched six years later, Master of Disaster has been updated this year to address more events exacerbated by human-driven climate change, such as landslides, drought and heatwaves.
More than 10,000 editions of the game, aimed at players as young as nine years old, have been distributed across the archipelago nation.
“The youth are very essential in creating this disaster resiliency mindset,” Macatulad said.
‘Keeps on getting worse’
While the Philippines has introduced disaster readiness training into its K-12 curriculum, Master of Disaster is providing a jolt of innovation, Bianca Canlas of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told AFP.
“It’s important that it’s tactile, something that can be touched and can be seen by the eyes of the youth so they can have engagement with each other,” she said of the game.
Players roll a dice to move their pawns across the board, with each landing spot corresponding to cards containing questions or instructions to act out disaster-specific responses.
When a player is unable to fulfil a task, another can “save” them and receive a “hero token” — tallied at the end to determine a winner.
At least 27,500 deaths and economic losses of $35 billion have been attributed to extreme weather events in the past two decades, according to the 2026 Climate Risk Index.
“It just keeps on getting worse,” Canlas said, noting the lives lost in recent months.
The government is now determining if it will throw its weight behind the distribution of the game, with the sessions in Valenzuela City serving as a pilot to assess whether players find it engaging and informative.
While conceding the evidence was so far anecdotal, ASSIST’s Macatulad said he believed the game was bringing a “significant” improvement in its players’ disaster preparedness knowledge.
“Disaster is not picky. It affects from north to south. So we would like to expand this further,” Macatulad said, adding that poor communities “most vulnerable to the effects of climate change” were the priority.
“Disasters can happen to anyone,” Agasen, the teen, told AFP as the game broke up.
“As a young person, I can share the knowledge I’ve gained... with my classmates at school, with people at home, and those I’ll meet in the future.”
