Awards Watch: No Globes, No Glory

Helen Mirren displays her Golden Globes from last year.

The writers strike has taken down its biggest victim yet: the Golden Globe Awards. Instead of a glitzy affair with inebriated celebrities, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will merely announce the winners during a live "press conference". It will still be broadcast on NBC Sunday night -- as a 60-minute "news event", though how they'll manage to stretch out a reading off of names to fill up a whole hour is beyond me.

As for Steven Spielberg's already announced Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award, that will just have to wait until next year. No word yet if that holds true for Rumer Willis as well.

In other awards news:

• It's all drama with the Directors Guild of America award nominations. As expected, Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) and Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) were recognized, as did three lucky directors who just saw their Oscar odds triple if not quadruple: Michael Clayton's Tony Gilroy, Into the Wild's Sean Penn and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Julian Schnabel. Out of luck: romantic epics (Joe Wright for Atonement), musicals (Tim Burton for Sweeney Todd) and comedies (Jason Reitman for Juno).
• Speaking of guilds, the recent American Society of Cinematographers nominations are as expected: Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will Be Blood and two nods for Roger Deakins, for both The Assassination of Jesse James and No Country for Old Men. Both the DGA and ASC awards will be handed out on January 26.
• The Broadcast Film Critics Association handed out their Critics' Choice Awards last night in front of a not quite so star-studded crowd. Notable no-show winners included the Coen brothers, Julie Christie and Amy Ryan. See the comments section below for a quick look at the full list of winners, including two for the Movie Dearest New Star of the Year, Hairspray's Nikki Blonsky.
• And finally, the Academy has revealed the short list for their Make Up category. Potential nominees include Sweeney Todd and the latest Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean movies, as well as the lucky bastards who got to rouge on all those Spartan six packs in 300. Alas, Hairspray was passed over; if you were looking for a cross-dressing man in a fat suit to get nominated, you'll have to settle for ... Norbit?

Links via Reuters.com, GoldenGlobes.org, DGA.org, ASCmag.com, BFCA.org and Oscars.org.