· 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]

News that the Golden Globes ceremony had been permanently and irrevocably canceled, replaced instead by a sickly televised press conference wheeled out in an iron lung to wheeze through this year's winners, did little to raise Hollywood's spirits last night as they solemnly death-marched up the Critics' Choice Awards red carpet. Not surprisingly, The Envelope now reports that the fall of Hollywood's booziest, A-listiest party is taking down all of its satellite clusterfêtes with it, in what could well go down in Hollywood history books as The Great Tinseltown Party Famine of Oh-Eight:

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:

The Golden Globes have been canceled due to the ongoing writers strike. "[T]he Hollywood Foreign Press Association instead will merely make an announcement of the winners," according to Nikki Finke. Exciting! We've learned to live without writers, but can we live without... awards shows? Do we want to live in that cold, red carpet-less place? With the football postseason drawing to a close, what will office pools be about in a world without awards shows? How will we know which forgotten character actors died last year without a mournful montage? What will the gays do? (Actually if they can manage to get a couple more awards shows canceled—and maybe replace them with encore presentations of the new American Gladiators—we might root for this strike to go on forever.) [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

· What's up with the Golden Globes? The industry's collector sphincter is still uncomfortably contracted as it awaits official word from the HFPA and NBC about whether or not they'll try to put on some version of Hollywood's Drunkest Night without striking writers and sympathetically no-showing actors, though whispers are already indicating that the whole thing will be flushed. [Variety, THR]
· James Bond has a love interest! Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko is officially reporting for Bond 22 sexual-conquest duty, ready to deliver a coquettish line about how great the superspy's tuxedo will look crumpled up on the floor of her bedroom the morning after she's been ravaged by Daniel Craig. [Variety]

According to an announcement made by Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg this afternoon, the members of his union refuse to undermine their striking WGA brethren by crossing the WGA picket line at the Golden Globes:

· The looming threat of a strike-induced cancellation of the Golden Globes ceremony has thrown the party-planning world into chaos: How can anyone commit half a million bucks to fill a venue with chocolate fountains, imposing mounds of peeled shrimp, and ice sculptures of prohibitive best actor favorite Daniel Day Lewis when there's a chance the whole night might be called off? [Variety]
· The WGA has granted a waiver for the Independent Spirit Awards (to be hosted by Guild member Rainn Wilson), freeing the show's organizers from the stomach-churning stress being suffered by their writerless Globes counterparts. [THR]

· The Writers Guild has decided to picket the Golden Globes, a move that may make the decision to skip the ceremony easier for conflicted members of SAG. However, the possibility is raised that WGA protestors could be set up far enough away from the Beverly Hilton's entrance that actors who decide to attend could be spared the shame of physically crossing a picket line. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, organizers for the Globes scramble to figure out how to put on a show without writers, while talent awaits official word on whether or not they should cancel their table reservations in solidarity—a "topic so sensitive that a number of publicists — including Alan Nierob, who reps Mel Gibson and Steve Martin — wouldn't even comment about why their clients weren't commenting." [THR]

Already plagued by questions about which honorees might be willing to cross the WGA picket line to collect their gilded tokens of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's inscrutable esteem, the producers of the Golden Globes learned late yesterday that the Guild had turned down a waiver request to allow WGA writers to toil on their show, a move that will force their telecast to rely on the booze-fueled improvisations of its presenters to an even greater degree than usual. (This year, on-air talent will be compelled to drain half a bottle of cheap tequila—purely a voluntary option at past ceremonies—before they're allowed to exit the green room and take their wobbly place behind the podium. A vomit receptacle will be made available for those whose dangerously low body weights hamper their ability to hold down quickly imbibed quantities of alcohol.)

The fun-dampening writers strike has even managed to infiltrate one of Hollywood's most joyous activities—canvassing awards show nominees for their reactions. Gone is the balls-to-the-wind ebullience of past years, with actors hastily pledging to drop to their knees and service every member of their publicity and management teams in gratitude. Instead, any expression of happiness is instantly snuffed by buzz-killing follow-up question, "I see. And will you be attending?" Some are flatly refusing in deference to the Guild, some plan on following the herd, and some—we're looking at you, Borgnine—will let no chicken-armed red-shirts stand between them and a shot at some shiny gold hardware and an open bar. A sample of what they are saying:

Golden Globes Fun Fact: The Hallmark Channel's A Grandpa For Christmas received more nominations than ABC's Lost. (The tally: one to zero.) This, of course, is less a commentary on Lost's quality during the past TV season than it is a much-deserved celebration of Ernest Borgnine's enduring star power. [TV Week]

But judge for yourselves based on the above video from the press conference: Was the unkempt Tarantino boldly demonstrating to Hollywood that he'll participate in their second-tier orgy of self-congratulation, but only on his own terms? Or did he merely fall asleep in the Pussy Wagon waiting for the crack-of-dawn event to begin, awakening mere moments before he was to appear on camera, leaving him no time for some last-second grooming?

Early this morning, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the shadowy kudos-proferring concern that curates Tinseltown's Drunkest Night, enlisted the help of motormouth auteur Quentin Tarantino, indestructible cheerleader Hayden Pannetiere, and frequently shirtless, occasionally fat-suited Van Wilder star Ryan Reynolds in announcing this year's Golden Globes nominations, a list of honorees that will be futilely scoured for clues as to the eventual composition of the Academy Awards shortlist.

· Golden Globes producers await a decision on whether or not the WGA will grant their (probably doomed) waiver request to allow striking writers to whip them up a script, a wish that they've already granted for their supportive bretheren in SAG's upcoming awards show. Meanwhile, the industry wonders who'll be willing to cross the picket line to attend the Globes ceremony. [Variety]
· Fox pushes back Avatar, director James Cameron's much-anticipated return to theaters, from Memorial Day 2009 to December 18th, then spackles that mid-year holiday weekend hole with Ben Stiller's Night a the Museum sequel. [THR]

A couple of tipsters were generous enough to forward us a pair of delightful e-mails currently making the rounds in local media and industry circles, in which aggrieved Hollywood princes Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen took a moment from their busy schedules to offer LAT reporter Susan King some constructive feedback on her assessment of Sheen's effusive introduction of brother Emilio's latest cinematic masterpiece at this year's Golden Globes. Below, Estevez helpfully quotes the blurb in its entirety before sharing his critique:

Guests lists at industry parties are a tricky matter, and their convoluted politics become even more complex when one's throwing an exclusive post-awards show orgy, as hosts try to balance the ratio of talent to the behind-the-scenes types hoping to fellate them: invite too many famous faces and they might end up wandering the party looking vaguely lost, frustrated as seemingly every eager reveler is already engaged in the act of servicing someone else; invite too few, and guests will mob the talent, greedily clawing at the overattended VIPs for some celebrity-pampering time. Things become more tangled still when personal histories are involved, and the defiant uninvited show up, determined to test the superhuman power of fame over velvet rope and clipboard, as demonstrated by today's Page Six item about an alleged confrontation between Sean "Still Diddy This Month" Combs and the CAA gatekeepers trying to keep the boldface interloper out of their post-Globes party at the Sunset Tower:

After yesterday's wall-to-wall orgy of Golden Globes coverage, we've been resisting a return to the ceremony, hoping to avoid a flashback of the nightmares we suffered of being suffocated by Ken Davitian's Best Supporting Anus that might be induced by further references to Sacha Baron Cohen's victory speech. But we think that our Globes-free morning has probably liberated us from that hairy, strangling sphincter's grip on our unconscious mind, so we can now share this exchange overheard at the event by The Envelope's Kudos Crasher, in which two of show business's most accomplished egotists narrowly averted engaging in a tie-breaking dick-measuring contest after reaching a stalemate on a brief Walk of Fame placement showdown:

· The Academy revealed its shortlist for foreign-language Oscar: 9 films, including Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's (fine, we like typing his name) The Lives of Others, Pan's Labyrinth, and Volver. Apocalypto and Letters From Iwo Jima were excluded for being domestic productions. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu was excluded as part of the Academy's ongoing Criminally Overlooked Foreign and/or Documentary Submissions campaign. [Variety]
· Cautiously waiting for Golden Globes fever to die down lest it siphon some of the enthusiasm from their own honors, the St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Assn. Awards finally announced their winners. The Departed took best picture, the Mirren-Whitaker one-two combo we've all but inked into our Oscar ballots triumphs again, and Jennifer Hudson earns another boost to her self-confidence with her win for best supporting actress. [Variety]
· With the Globes question now factored in, here's a look at how the Oscar race is shaping up. This analysis names Dreamgirls, The Departed, The Queen, Babel, and Little Miss Sunshine the odds-on favorites for a best picture nomination, with outside shots for Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers. [AP]

At the risk of further stoking the fire of a sexagenarian lust unexpectedly ignited during Helen Mirren's two Golden Globes victories last night, we share with you the Reporter's account of the Double Queen's bawdy backstage remarks: