Golden Globes: Steven Spielberg's Lincoln leads nominations

Steven Spielberg's presidential biopic Lincoln is the frontrunner at this year's Golden Globe nominations.

It is up for seven prizes, including best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, best director for Spielberg, and best film drama.
In the latter category, it competes with Ben Affleck's thriller Argo and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, both of which have five nominations.
The winners will be announced in Los Angeles on 13 January, 2013.
There are also nominations for three British Dames - Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, as well as TV nods to Downton Abbey, The Hour and Sherlock.
Bond theme In the drama actor category, British star Day-Lewis is shortlisted alongside Richard Gere, John Hawkes, Denzel Washington and Joaquin Phoenix, for The Master.
Phoenix shared the best actor prize with his co-star Philip Seymour Hoffman at the recent Venice Film Festival, but the elder actor has been demoted to the supporting actor category at the Globes.

 

 

 

Nominations for best actress are led by Jessica Chastain, who plays a CIA agent on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty.

She is joined on the shortlist by Marion Cotillard, Naomi Watts and British stars Rachel Weisz and Dame Helen Mirren, who stars in Hitchcock, which documents the making of Psycho.
The film adaptation of stage hit Les Miserables, by British director Tom Hooper, has four nominations. It is in the running for best film - musical or comedy, while stars Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway both get acting nods.
Hooper, who won an Oscar for The King's Speech in 2010, told the BBC the nominations were a "testament" to the film's production crew, "who were largely London-based".
"It's a great moment for the industry there," he added.
However, Hooper himself missed out on the shortlist for best director.
Instead, Ben Affleck, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow and Ang Lee - who filmed the "unfilmable" novel Life Of Pi - all made the cut.
This is the first time Affleck has been named in the category, but his counterparts are all former nominees, with Lee and Spielberg going on to win twice.

 

 

Affleck (r) is also nominated as best director

Voted for by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globes are an important precursor to the Oscars.
Last year's winners included Meryl Streep, Octavia Spencer, Jean Dujardin and Christopher Plummer - all of whom went on to receive Academy Awards in the main acting categories.
One notable difference of opinion in recent years came over The Hurt Locker.
The Globes overlooked Kathryn Bigelow in the best director category, giving the prize to her former husband, James Cameron, for Avatar. A month later, the decision was reversed at the Oscars, where Bigelow became the first woman ever to win the best director award.
Darker tones
Another of the big differences between the two ceremonies is the spilt between "drama" and "musical or comedy" in the main categories, meaning the Globes can lavish praise on lighter films which may miss out at the Oscars.

 

 

Megan Fox, Ed Helms and Jessica Alba announced the nominations

The category has darker tones this year, however, with the inclusion of Les Miserables and Silver Linings Playbook, a comedy with a strong focus on mental health problems.
On the other hand, romantic drama Salmon Fishing In The Yemen unexpectedly received three nominations in the category, with British stars Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt up for best actor and actress.
Another British contender is pop star Adele, nominated for best original song for her title track from the Bond film Skyfall.
She is up against Suddenly from Les Miserables, as well as songs from The Hunger Games, Act of Valor and Stand Up Guys, which features a song from Bon Jovi.
In the foreign language category, Amour - the winner of the Palme d'Or in Cannes - is up against A Royal Affair from Denmark, Untouchable from France, Rust & Bone and Kon-Tiki.

Mick Jagger love letters to Marsha Hunt make £187,000 at auction

 

 

Marsha Hunt is believed to be the inspiration for Stones song Brown Sugar

A collection of love letters written by Mick Jagger to American singer Marsha Hunt has sold at auction for £187,250.

The "beautifully-written and lyrical" letters were penned in the summer of 1969 while the Rolling Stones frontman was in Australia.
They are believed to be the inspiration for the band's hit single Brown Sugar.
According to Sotheby's the 10 letters had been expected to fetch up to £100,000.
Hunt confessed she was selling them because she needed the money.
"I put these letters in a bank 30 years ago thinking that our daughter would find them valuable as an adult," she told the BBC.
"Who could have anticipated that rock 'n roll would remain so popular, that 30 years on this band would still be performing?"
The letters were written to Hunt, the then face of the West End production of Hair, in July and August 1969 while Jagger was filming Ned Kelly in the Australian outback.
At the time, his relationship with Marianne Faithfull was under strain - she was due to play the lead role in the film but attempted suicide in Australia and went back to England.
"The passage of time has given these letters a place in our cultural history," Hunt said after the sale.
"1969 saw the ebbing of a crucial, revolutionary era, highly influenced by such artists as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, James Brown and Bob Dylan.
"Their inner thoughts should not be the property of only their families, but the public at large, to reveal who these influential artists were - not as commercial images, but their private selves," she said.
Jagger's relationship with Hunt, with whom he had his first child, Karis, was kept under wraps until 1972.

 

 

 The letters were written while Jagger was filming Ned Kelly in Australia

She told the BBC that the term 'love letters' was "possibly the wrong thing to call them".
"There's nothing salacious in them. This is somebody reflecting what is going on in his life at a particular time when, because of his age - he was actually 25 when he went off to Australia - you're really looking at somebody in their artistic prime, talking about filming, talking about music, talking about the future, and they are reflective.
"There has been a growing 50-year history of this person as a writer and as an influence upon young people," she said.
"It would have been criminal for these letters not to become public. One has to look at the fact that somebody has become historically important."
Hunt told the Guardian newspaper that she was selling the letters because she had been unable to pay her bills.
"I'm broke," Hunt, who now lives in France, told the newspaper.
The letters were the centrepiece of an English literature and history sale at Sotheby's which also also included song lyrics and a Rolling Stones playlist.

Lincoln receives 13 Critics Choice film nominations,Lincoln receives 13 Critics Choice film nominations

Lincoln receives 13 Critics Choice film nominations

 

 

 

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln in Spielberg's historical drama  

 

 

Steven Spielberg's biographical drama about Abraham Lincoln has received 13 citations from the latest film awards body to announce its nominations.

Lincoln's 13 nods at the Critics Choice Movie Awards will exceed the 12 given to 2010's Black Swan by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BCFA).
Its nominations include citations for Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field as well as one for best acting ensemble.
Winners will be announced at a ceremony in Los Angeles on 10 January.
The film version of stage musical Les Miserables received 11 nominations, while romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook earned ten.
Ang Lee's Life of Pi was recognised nine times, while Iran hostage thriller Argo, cult drama The Master and James Bond film Skyfall have seven nominations each.

Jamie Foxx takes the title role in Django Unchained

Yet there are only five nods for Kathryn Bigelow's Osama Bin Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty, which has been leading the field in the first round of critics awards.
Joey Berlin, president of the BFCA, said 2012 had been "a truly spectacular year in filmmaking", adding that its 270-plus members had had "an embarrassment of riches to choose from".
The Critics Choice nominations will be followed later this week by the nominations for 2013's Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards.
Meanwhile, another prize contender - Quentin Tarantino's slavery-era western Django Unchained - has received another set of nominations from another awards body.
The film will be up for four prizes at the 44th annual NAACP Image awards, to be presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on 1 February.
Acclaimed independent film Beasts of the Southern Wild is also up for four awards, among them a best actress prize for its nine-year-old star Quvenzhane Wallis.