· MGM is close to a deal with the Weinstein Co. to become their exclusive distributor. The pact will be reflected in an update of their classic logo, replacing Leo the Lion with Bob Weinstein lying flat on his belly, roaring ferociously at an assistant who brought him a regular Diet Coke instead of a Diet Coke with Splenda. [Variety]
· The WGA gives its top screenwriting awards to Crash and Brokeback Mountain, for original and adapted screenplays, respectively. Paul Haggis tearfully dedicates the award to "all the carjackers I've known, or know, or will be blessed enough to come to know." Then, kissing his index finger and pointing it to the back of the room, he concluded, "This one's for you guys." [Variety]
· David Cronenberg's next film will be the Bruce Wagner-written Maps to the Stars, in what promises to do for showbiz what Dead Ringers did for gynecology. Hollywood execs with gaping head wounds: a marriage made in heaven! [Variety]
· Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg reteam with The Yards director James Gray for We Own the Night, in which the duo play campus feminists who mount a candlelight vigil, that they may fear for their safety no longer. [Variety]
· Sexual Healing, the Marvin Gaye biopic long in turnaround, has finally been greenlit, with Jesse L. Martin in the lead, with the contingency that all the depressing "shot by his father" ending stuff be replaced with an uplifting Rent-inspired finale revolving around the number of seconds in a week. [THR]

The next Bond movie, Casino Royale, is off to a not-so-great start. True, we have our new 007 and hopefully he's laying off the booze, lest we end up with the rather unrefined image of the superspy flying down the Swiss Alps in a black tie and little else but the other two crucial, pussy-stroking pieces of the Bond puzzle are still missing: the villain and the girl.

In the end, Lionsgate's plan to buy themselves a SAG award by sending out an unprecedented 130,000 Crash screeners to every living SAG member (last paying gig Thug #3 on Magnum P.I.? You get a screener!) proved to be a winning strategy, as the movie took a best film ensemble trophy at yesterday's SAG awards. Shut out of the proceedings was Brokeback Mountain, a clear message from voters that it requires more actorly skill to pretend to be racist than it does to pretend to be gay. Other winners included Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote, Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line, the cast of Lost for best ensemble TV drama and, in a turn of events sure to have resulted in Ari Emanuel launching a plate of Chinese food at his plasma screen, the cast of Desperate Housewives for best ensemble TV comedy.

Over at Slate, fully cybernetic BoingBoing futuro-blogger Xeni Jardin files a report on the start of every file-sharing geek's favorite time of the year, the annual kick-off of the awards screener piracy season. A handful of awards hopefuls are already burning up the BitTorrent wires, courtesy of either Academy voters or others with the opportunity to feed the piracy pipeline:

When does a movie's award campaign cease to come off like a transparent attempt to buy some prizes, and start feeling like the grassroots beginning of a new, celebrity-courting, pseudoreligious cult? How about when the studio behind it decides to send out 130,000 screeners yes, you read correctly including one to every single mind-malleable member of SAG. Welcome to the birth of Crashology. Hide your children.

Not satisfied merely to report who won what irrelevant critics award and what they were wearing when they collected the prize, Reuters is quickly becoming the go to newswire for half-baked Oscar prognostications. Consider their analysis of last night's Broadcast Film Critics' Choice Awards:

Since the upsetting announcement earlier today that Crash was recognized in the Writers Guild nominations for best original screenplay, we've been driving around the city with our car windows rolled up, weeping openly and looking to induce an accident just so we could finally connect with another Angeleno. (Preferably with a motorist of a different race to test our unfair preconceptions of minority groups.) Amazingly, we were unable to form a fender-bending union with a fellow searcher, but now the good news: A reader with WGA membership offers a possible, comforting explanation for Crash's recognition by fellow scribes: