Surprise wins for actresses Demi Moore and Fernanda Torres at the Globes mean that the road to the Oscars may have plenty more thrills to come.

This year's Golden Globes did what those awards do best: shook up a major Oscar race, when Demi Moore won best actress in a musical or comedy for the body-horror satire The Substance, and Fernanda Torres won in the drama category for the Brazilian political film I'm Still Here. Both actresses had been far down on most Oscar prediction lists, mentioned as unlikely possibilities. But their unexpected wins, plus the fact that both gave stirring, eloquent acceptance speeches, now puts them firmly in the mix for nominations.

Let's be blunt about what the Globes are. As awards, they're candy, an excuse for a glitzy, starry show, where everyone from Nicole Kidman to Harrison Ford and Zendaya turn up. The Globes were reconstituted two years ago when the scandal-ridden Hollywood Foreign Press Association was bought out by corporate owners, and its membership changed. But the 334 Globe voters, from international publications or websites, do not overlap with the more than 9,000 people who can vote for Oscars. Winning a Globe is all about momentum and being perceived as a winner, or at least a competitor to be taken seriously. That is why those wins are such good news for Moore and Torres.

Moore's performance as a television personality pushed aside for a younger replacement (Margaret Qualley) is strong, but an Oscar campaign needs more than that, and she has the kind of comeback narrative awards voters love. She smartly emphasised it in her acceptance speech, beginning with the fact that she had never been awarded for acting in her long career. She mentioned her own insecurity, how a producer told her 30 years ago that she was "a popcorn actress" who could make money but not be taken seriously, an idea she internalised – a nice touch of modesty. Then, she said, "As I was at a low point, I had this creative, out of the box, bonkers script come across my desk, called The Substance". That kind of resurgence plays right into voters' hands, as it did when Ke Huy Quan won an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once after having left acting for decades. And it helps that the theme of The Substance, the necessity and the high cost of Hollywood vanity and stardom, resonates among voters.

Torres, a veteran actress but hardly a Hollywood star, was even more of a surprise, but her win is well deserved. Her fierce, understated performance is the heart of Walter Salles's I'm Still Here, in which she plays a woman whose husband, a former politician, is among the disappeared victims of Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1970s. Torres's speech included an affecting dedication to her own mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who plays her character's mother in the film and who was nominated for a Globe and an Oscar 25 years ago for another Salles film, Central Station. And Torres was among the few winners whose speech commented, obliquely, on the state of the world, linking the resilience her character needed to today. "There's something that is happening now in the world with so much fear. And this is a film that helped us to think how to survive in tough times like this," she said. It's a hopeful message delivered with tact that Hollywood is likely to welcome.

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Of course, these upsets merely put Moore and Torres in the minds of Oscar voters (and for Moore, Bafta voters, as she made the longlist). The Globes can be terrible predictors because dividing the major categories into comedy and drama doubles the number of nominees. But Moore and Torres beat the toughest competition. Moore won over three presumed Oscar frontrunners, Mikey Madison (Anora), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) and Cynthia Erivo (Wicked). Torres's category included Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Angelina Jolie (Maria) and Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door). All eight of those actresses are now in a game of Oscars musical chairs, a game in which Moore and Torres weren't necessarily players a few days ago.

Another acting upset, Sebastian Stan's win as best actor in a musical or comedy for A Different Man, isn't likely to have the same impact. The real competition there was in the drama category, with the Oscar frontrunners Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) and Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) going head-to-head and Brody winning. Stan's surprise win is likely to stand as career validation and an awards blip because he faced some weak competition. Glen Powell for Hit Man and Gabriel Labelle for Saturday Night seem like moves to fill that category. It is, after all, rare for The Golden Globes to rattle a race the way it has best actress. More often they solidify Oscar prospects, as it did for Kieran Culkin, who won best supporting actor for A Real Pain and is seeming like a lock to win the Oscar.

The most important thing about the Golden Globes this year may be its timing. Voting for Oscar nominations ends next Sunday, 12 January, which means the Globes arrived just in time to let voters mull the new awards landscape.

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