How Golden are the Globes?

My mantra for this awards weekend has been: The race is not over.

There's a tendency to "call it" as soon as there's a frontrunner. And for many, "The Social Network's" four Critics Choice awards on Friday night were a validation that it will ultimately do much the same at the Academy Awards, that anything we write about from here on out is just dramatics.

The people who think this way will react tonight's Globes ceremony in one of two ways: when "The King's Speech" wins, they'll say, "the Globes have only matched the Oscar once since 2003. They're becoming increasingly meaningless." Or, when "The Social Network" wins, they will say, "it won the weekend! It's the clear frontrunner."

We can write any angle we want on the race, but I see it as much more of a beast and much less of a bygone conclusion.

Last year, when "The Hurt Locker" won the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and Writers Guild (as well as a Critics Choice top prize), people were still saying - "It can't win! 'Avatar' will surge back and take the top prize!" Of course, "Hurt Locker" not only won Best Picture, it took a whopping six Oscars (twice the take of Avatar's).

And even though in hindsight it seemed obvious that "Hurt Locker" would win, the point is that even though it was *statistically* the movie to bet on, so many people were reluctant - it's directed by a woman, it's too independent, yada yada yada. As last year's race evolved week after week, we who write about the Oscars were confronted with the knowledge that we did not really know what to make of the race. There was a new voting system, there were multiple films with big awards, and each film seemed to have things going *against* it as well as *for* it.

If "The Hurt Locker's" victory taught us anything, it's that this Academy will go out for genre films that push form as much as content. Whereas in the 1990s they were an organization that chose Best Pictures based on their overall experience, emotions, and spectacle (see also: Dances With Wolves, Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love) more than critically engaged films aimed on deconstructing genres or cultural crises (The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, American Beauty).

But we're not there yet. We're at the Globes. And the Globes are still more likely to pick period pieces. They're more likely to pick uplifting films. They're more likely to pick spectacles or well-performed, formally accomplished pieces. They chose A Beautiful Mind, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings, The Aviator, Babel, Atonement, Slumdog Millionaire, Avatar. Many of these are international productions, many of them look and feel great. If we're to follow trends, "The King's Speech" makes sense.

And were "The King's Speech" to win, the race would become the two-headed giant we've all conjured: the cynical, brainy "Social Network" against the traditional, uplifting historical drama "King's Speech."

But we're not there yet. The Oscar nominations haven't even come out. What if "The King's Speech" has 13 and "The Social Network" has six? The race would become something entirely different. What if "The Fighter" or "Black Swan" keep doing consistently, keep sneaking in unexpected places, gradually building voting blocs?

We look to the Golden Globes to give us a sense of where the Oscar race is headed. But certainly that's been less and less of the case. "Atonement" and "Babel" were never really in play to take the top prizes. The "Avatar" win last year set up the dichotomy -- groundbreaking studio films vs. traditionally-made independent films. If anything, they set the tone much more than the Critics Choice.

When Natalie Portman and Annette Bening both win, for Drama and Comedy respectively, we'll be looking at the two women vying for Best Actress. Whoever wins Best Supporting Actress will have the momentum. If Christian Bale loses, Supporting Actor becomes a race. Ditto Colin Firth.

And while I'm almost certain David Fincher is winning Best Director and Aaron Sorkin is winning Best Screenplay, what happens if "The King's Speech" wins there?

Maybe this is a year for the Globes to actually seem more plugged in to the race, to choose their awards based on some kind of critical criteria.

Then again, they did nominate "The Tourist." Thrice.