“That’s the one they where they get drunk and kinda’ sit around tables,” said Anderson Cooper last night on CNN; he was, of course, referring to the Golden Globe awards, the glitzy award ceremonies of which have been canceled due to thegolden-globes.gif writer’s strike. Instead, they’re going to be doing an extended press conference. It’s not certain if the actors, who promised to boycott the ceremony in solidarity with the WGA, are going to show up for the press conference. You can read all about it here. Yawn.

Speaking of awards season, folks are getting a might antsy about the Oscars . . . are they in danger of going the way of the Globes? In the New York Times, David Carr writes

“The willingness of the striking Writers Guild of America to take on the most glittering of all entertainment spectacles has sent shock waves through an industry whose idea of political activism has historically been confined to wearing a ribbon on its frock for this or that cause. Hollywood business logic says that nothing stops the show, but this time the show — at least in its traditional incarnation — may not go on.”

Like a lot of folks, I could care less about the Globes, but mess with my annual Oscar fix, as stultifying and stupid as they can be, and I’m going to get a might ticked. (For those masochistic enough to wonder how Oscar balloting works, Variety has a primer here. Seems that it’s only slightly less complex than the inertial guidance system on the space shuttle.)

Finally–and could this be any further away in every respect from the Oscars?–the 2008 Contemplative Film Blogathon going on now through Sunday over at Unspoken Cinema. Contemplative Cinema is a special interest of mine, from the classics of Tarkovsky and Ozu to the new contemplative cinema of Tsai Ming-Liang and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Check out the blogathon to learn about some of the issues in this very-un-Hollywood mode of filmmaking.