Still going through their Road to the Oscars motions even though they certainly suspect the gilded path will terminate in a wall of red-tuxedoed WGA picketers, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the official poster for its 80th annual awards ceremony—one which, we suspect, might provide a clue as to producer Gil Cates' plans for an emergency "alternative" telecast.

· Like Mr. Tumnus having his way with Keira Knightly in a darkened family library, the BAFTAs make sweet, desperate love to Atonement, lavishing 14 nominations on the film; runners-up No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood (nine nods each), like adolescents wandering in on the lovers in mid-thrust, stare with a mix of jealousy and immature incomprehension at the act of carnality unfolding in front of them. (We now end this incredibly labored run of Atonement analogies.) [Variety]
· Breakout Juno star Ellen Page entrusts her red-hot career to first-time director Drew Barrymore, with Page taking a role as a roller-derby-playing "alterna-teen" (no need to stretch too far coming off a hit) in Whip It!
[Variety]

Anyone who endured as much as two minutes of NBC's Access Hollywood-branded Repetition Of The Winners' Names Recited Moments Ago At The First Annual Crippled Golden Globes Press Conference Spectacular probably didn't find it hard to envision a similar nightmare scenario unfolding at a strike-hampered Academy Awards, wherein planned host Jon Stewart is replaced by a dream celebrity-newsmagazine-mannequin team of Mark McGrath and Maria Menounos, whose only function will be to smile and point to headshots of Oscar victors projected onto the 100-foot screen looming behind them on the Kodak Theatre stage. (And to respond with glee to reaction shots of a cardboard cut-out of Jack Nicholson, complete with omnipresent sunglasses and shit-eating grin, propped up in the actor's customary front-row seat.)

A press release from the WGA today demonstrated how the Guild has the potential to be a merciful awards-show-waiver-granting Hollywood entity, announcing that they have reached a pact with the NAACP allowing the Image Awards to proceed as planned:

After a disorienting Golden Access Globes Press Hollywood Conference Awards that left nominees and audiences alike utterly befuddled (we understand Sally Field was fished out of The Grove's dancing waters fountain at 3 a.m. delivering an impassioned speech about bringing the troops home to two security guards on a golf cart), our traditional Globes parties post-mortem promised to be a similar mess. Still, if there were awards, and there were winners, by God there's going to be a reactions round-up, even if it comes off sounding a lot like the ones you read after the nominations are announced:
· The Atonement crew toasted their win at a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, where the ghost of O.D.'d John Belushi smiled over their WWII romance's win. [Variety]
· Marion Cotillard enjoyed her win for La Vie en Rose from the Four Seasons. "I'm enjoying so much what's going on here, I can't be disappointed in any way," she said, convincingly masking her extreme disappointment. [Variety]

· NBC's Billy Bush-enhanced Reading of the Golden Globes Winners telecast draws just 5.8 million viewers, lower Nielsen numbers than even last week's public-access-quality People's Choice Awards delivered to CBS. Meanwhile, the premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was huge for Fox. [THR]
· Shaking off the disappointment of its Globes debacle, NBC orders another season of Proven Ratings Winner American Gladiators (surely, two episodes is all the evidence one needs to make such a commitment!), though the network is being coy about how many episodes it's ordered or when they might air. [Variety]

Even if the cancellation of the Golden Globes and its satellite parties had been precipitated by nuclear, rather than labor, Armageddon, you could be sure that a radioactive, iridescent army of swag suite staffers would still be roaming the smoldering Hollywood hellscape, distributing designer jeans, sunglasses, and coupons redeemable for full-body laser-resurfacing procedures to any semi-recognizable survivors of the blast. Though gifting professionals initially feared that the sober climate of this crippled awards season might dissuade people from turning out to collect their frivolous wares, they soon realized that the siren call of free shit would be far too seductive to ignore:

It's a Tarnished Golden Globes One-Hour Announcement-Of-The-Winners Press Conference Extravaganza Free-For-All! The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has just revealed that NBC no longer has an exclusive on Sunday night's much-anticipated list-reading, inviting any media outlet with 60 or so free minutes and some warm bodies to spare to drop by and cover the event themselves: "After discussions with NBC, Hollywood Foreign Press Association President Jorge Camara today announced that the HFPA will have complete control of its 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards Announcement that is scheduled to take place Sunday, January 13 at 6:00 p.m. PST in the International Ballroom of The Beverly Hilton. Under the new arrangement, there will be no restrictions placed on media outlets covering the press conference." There is no word, however, if refreshments will be served to anyone who bothers to show up. [Variety]

At the tail end of a story announcing the nominees for this year's Flackies, the honor handed out by Hollywood publicists to recognize special achievements in the dark arts of spin and punitive client-access withdrawal, clear evidence that the awards season is an utterly exhausting stretch run for reporters forced to cover every last kudos-related press release: "Noms were also announced for the Maxwell Weinberg Publicist Showman Awards for Television and Motion Picture, which honors union publicists for achievements in publicity and promotion during the previous calendar year. I could add those noms here but I thought this was getting long." [Fishbowl LA Photo: ICG]

In an attempt to drain all the suspense from WGA Awards party you've been planning since last March (one that, given the gala-cancellation news of yesterday afternoon, would inevitably be an even more pathetic affair than Sunday's upcoming Reading Of The Golden Globes Winners By Your Favorite Access Hollywood Personalities Extravaganza Presented By NBC), the LAT's Gold Derby blog interprets the non-alphabetical ordering of nominees in the Guild's press release as a spoiler indicating the winners, citing a "goof" that may or may not have happened last year. Those interested in keeping the possible identities of this year's winners a mystery should refrain from clicking on either of the preceding links or the image above; those who'd like to think they're getting a sneak peak at the results—be the first one on the picket line to ruin the surprise for your fellow strikers, then gripe about how over-hyped you feel that particular script was!—should feel free to indulge their baser, WGA-Awards-Christmas-spoiling instincts.

In a move that's sure to disappoint thousands of Written By subscribers, the WGA West has announced that it's calling off its own awards banquet, a non-televised affair once scheduled to take place at the Bonaventure Hotel on February 9th. Weirdly, however, it seems that the left-coasted outpost of the Guild didn't inform the WGA East of their plans before they put out a press release, a turn of events so disorienting that a THR editor, obviously exhausted by the non-stop barrage of awards-cancellation developments of the past few days, pushed through this amusingly scatological headline in response to the news. [THR]

· With plenty of time on their hands these days to evaluate their relationships, studios have start dropping (and/or not renewing) first-look deals with partners with whom they've fallen out of love. Not even America's Sweetheart Reese Witherspoon (and her Type A shingle) has been immune from this recent caprice, though New Line was more than happy to climb into bed with her after a recent dumping. [Variety]
· A belt-tightening ICM is suspending several agents, who still will receive strike pay and benefits until the end of the labor war, and temporarily cutting some salaries. The silver lining: they're not laying off any assistants. (Yet.) [THR]

According to the LAT's Gold Derby blog, some scandalized members within shadowy, buffet-decimating, kudos-proffering concern the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are livid that network broadcast partner NBC, hoping to salvage something from the strike-ravaged wreckage of the Golden Globes, intend to turn Sunday's one-hour press conference announcing this year's winners into an Access Hollywood-branded farce presided over by two of dinnertime TV's most recognizable faces:

As the emotionally devastating cancellation of the Golden Globes has given us a newfound appreciation for every last awards show moment Hollywood finds a way to give us in this strike-crippled year, we'd like to take a minute to relive the silent acceptance speech Favorite Leading Man Joaquin Phoenix (an honor not to be confused with Favorite Male Movie Star) offered on last night's People's Choice Awards.

· With the 65th Golden Globes Awards having succumbed to the strike plague, all eyes turn to its far wealthier and more powerful cousin Oscar, whose coughing up of blood into a lace handkerchief doesn't strike us as a good omen. [Variety]
· The loss of the Globes was the first real sting felt by the film industry since the start of the strike, resulting in studio executives demanding of a supposedly merciful God how He could have allowed them to go about all that For You Consideration campaigning in vain. [Variety]

According to the helpful countdown clock on their website, the next People's Choice Awards is but 364 days and some-odd hours away, which hopefully will be enough time for them to find their balls again after being castrated behind the awards barn as a sacrifice to the writers strike gods. Still, the ceremony we've not entirely reverentially referred to in the past as Oscar's Chain-Smoking, Lupus-Afflicted Aunt with an Internet Gambling Problem limped its way into American living rooms in an odd, greatly compromised CBS telecast last night, bereft of a studio audience, live star appearances, and awkward acceptance speeches from recently dumped actresses wondering how they can be all of America's favorite if they can't even be Justin Timberlake's.

· The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. estimates that the cancellation of the Globes "could" cost the local economy more than $80 million; should the Oscars also go down, the organization says L.A. can expect another $130 million to be flushed away. [Variety]
· The DGA announces the nominations for their yearly awards, with There Will Be Blood's Paul Thomas Anderson, No Country's Coen Brothers, Michael Clayton's Tony Gilroy, Into the Wild's Sean Penn, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Julian Schabel all earning the official esteem of their behind-the camera peers. [Variety]

What kind of Bizarro Hollywood are we living in, where the Critics' Choice Awards could very well become one of the crowning moments of the 2008 awards season? We've never been so desperately in need of the SAGgies in all our lives! But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, a round-up of last night's delightfully well-attended Broadcast Film Critics Association honors:
· No Country For Old Men took the most trophies—whose design fittingly looks like some kind of torture device Anton Chigurh might use—including Picture, Director, and Supporting actor. Juno and Hairspray took two lesser awards each. Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie took Actor and Actress, respectively. [AP]
· The last stars to arrive were also the biggest: George Clooney, then Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who managed to pry Angelina away from reporters before she could tell them about her desire to adopt America Ferrera, or any of this year's other Golden Globes orphans. [The Envelope]

OK, now we can consider the Golden Globes ceremony officially killed, as organizers have abandoned the bizarre , clusterfucky news-special-and-party-report scheme floated earlier today in favor of a one-hour press conference (televised by NBC) that will replace the boozy dinner-and-statuettes orgy we've all come to know and tolerate as we impatiently await the Oscars. (For the moment at least, let's not further darken our moods by speculating about What This Means for the Academy Awards. Fine—count to ten before commencing the doomsaying.) HFPA president Jorge Camara offers this heartwrenching obituary for his beloved event: "We are all very disappointed that our traditional awards ceremony will not take place this year and that millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favorite stars celebrating 2007's outstanding achievements in motion pictures and television. We take some comfort, however, in knowing that this year's Golden Globe Award recipients will be announced on the date originally scheduled." [Variety]

According to The Envelope, NBC and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are about to announce their desperation-inspired plans to salvage something broadcast-worthy from the strike-induced wreckage of the Golden Globes ceremony, hoping that the Writers Guild, motivated by pity, might agree not to picket the unrecognizable telecast-abomination stitched together from mismatching news special, clip show, and party-coverage parts: