Betting tips / Will Hamer / 07 January 2010 / Leave a comment Bet Now

The Golden Globes 'Best Director' award will go to a woman this year, predicts Will Hamer.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a small and strange beast.

Each year, in the form of the Golden Globes, its 90 or so members get together and throw a soiree for the movie elite.

Why so much attention is bestowed on these rather pointless awards is anyone's guess, but they can be a bonanza for anyone keen to take short odds.

Sadly, this year is slightly different from most. There's no Slumdog Millionaire that will sweep whatever it's nominated in but rather a wide and varied selection of films.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the big six - best picture, director and the four lead acting awards - could go to six different movies.

Here, I will concern myself with just Best Director.

Why?

Because there's still plenty of value in betting on Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker.

She's won all but one of the precursor awards this year, a tremendous strike-rate. She's odds-on for the Oscar and those Globe-voting people will be reluctant to not recognise her when the Academy is lining up to bestow 'Best Director' on a woman for the first time.

And while it's rare for a woman to be helming any Hollywood movie -let alone a war flick - she absolutely nailed the tour de force that is The Hurt Locker.

Her only real competition in the five-person field comes from Jason Reitman for Up in the Air, which is favourite to take out Best Drama but as good as it is, his dialogue-driven drama doesn't even come close to matching The Hurt Locker.

At $4.50, and falling, is James Cameron for a little movie you may have heard about, Avatar.

While it might be folly to say the Globes are too cool for the effects-driven Avatar, if they did fall in love with it they'll award it Best Drama and let Bigelow, one of Cameron's ex-wives, take home the award for directing.