Golden Globe Awards

The Golden Globe nominee for Best Director has made only three feature films so far, but he has already established himself as a tough and unsparing film maker, one who tackles gritty subjects in a highly visual manner. McQueen (45) who was born in London to immigrants from the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, confronted racism as a young student when he was placed in a class for those destined to be manual laborers.

2014 may be the year of Oscar Isaac. The 34-year-old Guatemalan-Cuban-American actor is finally being recognized for his many talents.

We all feel like we know Julie Delpy well, or at least her alter ego, Celine, the slightly neurotic, beautiful, whip smart woman who fell in love with Jesse (Ethan Hawke) on a train from Budapest in Before Sunrise in 1995, reignited their flame in Paris in Before Sunset (2004) and continued their bumpy happy ending together nine years later in Before Midnight for which Delpy has received her first Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical. “This has really felt like a life project,” said Delpy, who also co wrote the script with Hawke and director Richard Linklater.

Even though it was released back at the beginning of October, Gravity is still showing in more than 300 theaters nationwide, having racked up an impressive $300 million at the domestic box office and another $400 million around the world. Blockbuster numbers, in other words, for a movie with just two characters, one of whom is not on screen for more than a handful of minutes.

Golden Globe nominee for Best Director, Alexander Payne (52), was born in the American heartland, Omaha, Nebraska, into a family of Greek immigrants (originally Papadopoulos). His work as an American director has been marked by those competing influences, the all-American small-town environment where he’s set several of his movies, including his current, Nebraska, and his European heritage that informs his intense interest in European culture.

A former print and television journalist, British director Paul Greengrass is still attracted to newsworthy topics for his feature films. He started in the early 1980s directing current affairs investigative pieces for ITV, and launched his movie career with made-for-television non fiction films.

What a performance June Squibb was able to squeeze in Nebraska! Her role in the father and son family “road drama” directed by Alexander Payne earned the veteran actress a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. "I'm going to have a hell of a time at the Golden Globes," she says enthusiastically.

Idris Elba is a double nominee for a Golden Globe this year for Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or TV Movie for the intense British TV crime thriller Luther, and Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama for his compelling portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the expansive biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. These two distinct and riveting performances mark the versatility of this British born actor, whom American audiences first got to know as the centrifugal drug lord Russell "Stringer" Bell in HBO’s critically acclaimed series, The Wire.

Audiences are in for a musical treat on Sunday when the 71st annual Golden Globe Awards features songs composed by some of the world's top musicians. The nominees for Best Original Song, whose writers include U2, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake and Coldplay, are all strong contenders and it’s anybody’s guess who’s name will be called.

Two years ago, with his widely lauded A Separation, writer-director Asghar Farhadi announced the arrival of a new wave of Iranian cinema: intimate and complex, exquisitely sculpted with the emphasis on family and relationships. Farhadi’s film gave us a glimpse into modern Iranian society, and some of us may have been surprised to find that Iranians are a people with much the same issues and problems that we all have to deal with.