This morning, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the nominees for the 76th annual Golden Globe Awards. The ceremony, honoring film and television, will be broadcast live on 6 January at 8 pm EST. These nominees tend to be quite different from the Oscars or the Emmys as the HFPA is comprised of 90 members from 55 countries. They also split films into Musical or Comedy and Drama categories. This allows for twice as many nominees in picture and lead performances, but only single categories for supporting performances, directors, and screenplays.

It’s always interesting to see who gets nominated. The translation to the Oscars for the acting categories is roughly some combination of the Drama nominees with, typically, one nominee from the Musical or Comedy category getting the fifth slot. Also, what is defined as a musical or comedy is totally at the whim of the film’s campaign; that’s how a movie musical like A Star is Born can be nominated in the Drama categories while a horror film like Get Out can make the case for nominations in the Musical or Comedy category.

The biggest surprise for me is Elsie Fisher being nominated for Lead Actress in a Musical or Comedy for Eighth Grade. You never know how the larger groups are going to deal with young performers in comparatively small films. It takes the right campaign and a truly special performance for awards like the Golden Globes to recognize genuine leading performances from children or teenagers in the leading categories. To put it in perspective, the last young actress to achieve the same feat was Evan Rachel Wood in Thirteen. That was 15 years ago. Wood missed out on the Oscar, but Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider successfully got in for both the year before. The distributor for Eighth Grade is A24, which has quickly become a strong force for indie films making waves at the Oscars. Who knows if they can make magic happen again for Fisher?

Here are a few key categories to keep an eye on.

Best Motion Picture — Drama

• Black Panther

• Blackkklansman

• Bohemian Rhapsody

• If Beale Street Could Talk

• A Star is Born

These are five of the major dramatic contenders for the Oscars. Add on Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma (nominated in Foreign Language film here; HFPA keeps foreign language films separate from the Best Picture categories) and you have a good idea of where the category is going. First Reformed is seeing a bit of a surge in awards season right now and Can You Ever Forgive Me? has excellent reviews and that true story angle the Oscars love. Bohemian Rhapsody is the least likely nominee to carry over, but the box office earnings and biopic angle could be enough to sneak in.

Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy

• Crazy Rich Asians

• The Favourite

• Green Book

• Mary Poppins Returns

• Vice

Comedy is where the race gets interesting this year. Crazy Rich Asians is, sadly, not a real awards contender just because it is a broad romantic comedy, a genre that has fallen out of favor since the 90’s (prove me wrong, Academy). The Favourite is the new film from Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) film and the Academy has given his work surprising nominations in the past. This is the first film he directed that he did not write and it has been doing very well in major awards categories all season long. Green Book is popular with the voters for whatever reason and Mary Poppins Returns is a sequel to one of the most beloved films of all time. We don’t officially know what the reviews are going to be like yet because of the press embargo, but the critics who are talking seem to really like it. Vice is political satire about Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush presidency. You just never know how the Oscar voters feel about overtly political films, especially ones about recent history. This could be a surprise top nominee or only wind up in Makeup.

Best Motion Picture - Animated

• Incredibles 2

• Isle of Dogs

• Mirai

• Ralph Breaks the Internet

• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

This is a solid guess at what the Oscars lineup will be for Animated Feature. Early Man is another real contender. The Academy really likes Aardman Animations and director Nick Park, in particular, so you can never count their features and shorts out even if they don’t perform as well in their US release.

The rest of the nominees can be seen here.

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