5 Biggest Snubs of the 2011 Golden Globe Nominations

The 2011 Golden Globes nominees have been announced and the winners will be revealed next month but before we get to the winners we have to sift through the deserving and undeserving nominees. This year there were some great choices, particularly in the Best Picture Drama, Best Director and Best Actor Drama categories. There are a few missteps and a few major snubs and one omission that I can only assume is a bad ruling rather than bad voting. These are the five biggest mistakes for the 2011 Golden Globe nominations.

5. Everyone (Best Actor in a Supporting Role, TV)
The Golden Globes are a lot of fun because there are movie awards and television awards so all the stars come together for one night. Unfortunately there are too many awards between the two so the Golden Globes have to cut some awards. One award that suffers is the best actors in a supporting role. Supporting actors from TV series, mini-series and made for TV movies from both drama and comedy are all jammed into one category. That's six categories deserving of thirty nominations combined into one five-nominee category.

This is especially bad in the supporting actor category because it might be the most loaded of all the TV categories. Among the supporting actors that deserve a shot but have no prayer because of the limited nominations include Josh Charles and Alan Cumming (The Good Wife), Jason Segel and Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), Dax Shepherd (Parenthood), Ed O'Neil, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Danny Pudi, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong (Community), Bruce Campbell (Burn Notice), Josh Holloway, Michael Emerson, Naveen Andrews, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) and I could go on for about 20 more actors.

4. Heather Morris (Best Actress in a Supporting Role, TV)
Lea Michele seems to be nominated for everything and I'd love to know why. Lea Michele probably gets the most screen time of anybody on Glee and she is never once entertaining. In fact, Rachel is an annoying, unlikable character, which is never good for your main character. Heather Morris gets about 1/20th of the face time as Lea Michele and knocks every line out of the park. Two of the best moments of the entire year were the Britney/Brittany episode of Glee and the Christmas episode of Glee. Both were special because of Brittany while Rachel did nothing in either. Yes, Lea Michele is the best singer on television and as much as I'd love to give an acting award to someone who can act, it doesn't bother me too much that she is being given a nominee for being the actress that can sing the best but Heather Morris is the actress that can dance the best so why can't she be included too?

3. Connie Britton (Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama)
The Emmy Awards finally got it right in 2010 by nominating both Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler but now we're back to championing them again. You would think that an actor and actress that are on almost every snubs list every award show would eventually get the attention they deserve but I guess the voters aren't listening. To be fair the nominees for best actor in a drama is pretty rock solid so Chandler's omission is understandable. On the women's side choosing Piper Perabo over Connie Britton is one of the most mind boggling choices in a long time.

2. Mark Ruffalo (Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama)
The nominees for best comedy/musical pictures are simply atrocious but let's say that hypothetically the comedy/musicals that got nominations really are the cream of the crop and that better movies (like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or Kickass) didn't exist. If the best comedy/musicals to choose from are The Kids Are Alright, Red, Burlesque, Love and Other Drugs, The Tourist and Alice and Wonderland then best actor is a no-brainer. There is not one person that can watch these six movies in a row and come to any conclusion other than Mark Ruffalo gives the best performance of any of them by a mile and at the very least he has one of the five best performances. How can anybody that enjoys movies not notice Ruffalo's performance over the rest of this crap?

1. Toy Story 3 (Best Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical)
Remember last paragraph when I said let's go with a hypothetical situation where the comedy/musical best picture nominees were the right choices? Forget that now. That list of movies is embarrassing. How can any awards shows be taken seriously when they include Red and The Tourist as the best pictures of the year? Meanwhile how can something like Toy Story 3 not be included? I'm guessing this is some kind of Golden Globes rule where animated movies are not included in categories with live action movies because surely the voters weren't just dumb enough to not vote for it. Listen, I get it. Pixar movies have never been considered candidates at the Academy Awards because they don't want a light, funny animated movie beating the likes of the stuffy dramas like Black Swan, Blue Valentine, The King's Speech and so on. That's not how I would vote but it's fine. How can you not include Pixar movies, or any animated movies for that matter, in a category that has Red, the Tourist and Alice and Wonderland? The Hangover was a fun movie but better than Up? Wall-E was picked as the best movie of 2008, even over the stuffy dramas, so I have a hard time believing it shouldn't be included in a category with Burn After Reading and In Bruges. It's not even a Pixar thing either. Animated movie categories are getting more competitive every year. The comedy/musical best picture should probably include Toy Story 3, Despicable Me and How to Train Your Dragon.