We've polished the crystal ball, dealt the tarot cards and read the tea leaves to make our best guesses as to who'll take home the hardware in the major categories.
Motion Picture – Drama
Nominees: Carol; Mad Max: Fury Road; The Revenant; Room; Spotlight
Who should win? Spotlight is favoured, but Mad Max: Fury Road was a rollicking nail-biter and visual masterpiece. Here's hoping Max can pull off an upset.
Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Nominees: The Big Short; Joy; The Martian; Spy; Trainwreck
Who should win? Since when is a tale of a doomed astronaut battling to survive on Mars a comedy? What a knee-slapper ... not. The Big Short, with its tragicomic financial shenanigans, could ace this category.
Actress / Motion Picture – Drama
Nominees: Cate Blanchett (Carol); Brie Larson (Room); Rooney Mara (Carol); Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn); Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl)
Who should win? The favourite is Blanchett, but she might split the Carol vote with Mara, in which case Larson could race ahead with her poignant performance in Room.
Actress / Motion Picture – Comedy
Nominees: Jennifer Lawrence (Joy); Melissa McCarthy (Spy); Amy Schumer (Trainwreck); Maggie Smith (The Lady in the Van); Lily Tomlin (Grandma)
Who should win? The 100 or so members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association might try to flatter Amy Schumer in the hope of persuading her to host next year’s show – but veteran star Tomlin could be a surprise sentimental fave.
Actor / Motion Picture – Drama
Nominees: Bryan Cranston (Trumbo); Leonardo DiCaprio, (The Revenant); Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs); Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl); Will Smith (Concussion)
Who should win? Cranston delivered a virtuoso turn as the persecuted McCarthy-era Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, but it is likely to be crazy, bear-battling DiCaprio’s turn to pick up his third Globe in 11 nominations.
Actor / Motion Picture – Comedy
Nominees: Christian Bale (The Big Short); Steve Carell (The Big Short); Matt Damon (The Martian); Al Pacino (Danny Collins); Mark Ruffalo (Infinitely Polar Bear)
Who should win? Anybody who spends that amount of time stuck alone on Mars deserves a trophy. So, even if the film is still not a comedy, the win goes to Damon – but only because so few have seen The Big Short.
TV Series – Drama
Nominees: Empire; Game of Thrones; Mr. Robot; Outlander; Narcos
Who should win? If the HFPA were more in synch with pop culture, Mr. Robot would walk off with the trophy – but we'll still be thrilled to see Game of Thrones make off like a bandit.
TV Series – Comedy
Nominees: Casual; Mozart in the Jungle; Orange Is the New Black; Silicon Valley; Transparent; Veep
Who should win? Veep is easily worthy enough to win in any given year, but the buzz remains deafeningly electric around Transparent.
Actress / TV Series – Drama
Nominees: Caitriona Balfe (Outlander); Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder); Eva Green (Penny Dreadful); Taraji P Henson (Empire); Robin Wright (House of Cards)
Who should win? If Davis and Henson, both very deserving, cancel each other out, then Irish actress Balfe’s time-travelling 20th-century nurse trapped in the 18th-century Scottish highlands could prevail, a reflection of the HFPA’s global outlook.
Actress / TV Series – Comedy
Nominees: Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend); Jamie Lee Curtis (Scream Queens); Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep); Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin); Lily Tomlin (Grace and Frankie).
Who should win? Louis-Dreyfus has yet to receive a Golden Globe for her multiple-Emmy-winning comic excellence on Veep. She deserves to win – unless beloved veteran Tomlin, whose TV comedy roots reach all the way back to the Swingin' Sixties and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, gets the nostalgia vote.
Actor / TV Series – Drama
Nominees: Jon Hamm (Mad Men); Rami Malek (Mr. Robot); Wagner Moura (Narcos); Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul); Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan).
Who should win? While this is the last chance to anoint Hamm, now that Mad Men is gone for good, and while Malek should win for his remarkable breakthrough performance as a troubled, hoodie-wearing anarchist hacker, we're putting our money on Bob "Slippin' Jimmy" Odenkirk, who is simply brilliant in the Breaking Bad spin-off/prequel, Better Call Saul.
Actor / TV Series – Comedy
Nominees: Aziz Ansari (Master of None); Gael García Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle); Rob Lowe (The Grinder); Patrick Stewart (Blunt Talk); Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent)
Who should win? While conventional wisdom is that nobody can prevent a repeat victory for Tambor, if an upset occurs, it will be Bernal for his role as an oddball conductor.
• For the full list of all categories and nominees, visit www.goldenglobes.com The 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards start at 5am (UAE time) on Monday morning