The WGA strike is over, the Director’s Guild just signed an agreement, eyes turn to the the Screen Actors Guild whose contract expires this June and everyone is making statements laden with slippery subtext.

The Writers Guild made a statement about how their contract is ratified and everyone can expect them to work well with others now. P.S. Thanks to all the actors, producers and directors who lost work because of the strike. (Translation: We’ll be really, really, really cooperative with studios now. Unless, of course, our Screen Actor’s Guild brothers and sisters hit the picket line this summer.)

An AMPTP (studios) statement basically says what a pleasure it has been to work with the Director’s Guild. (Translation: If SAG strikes this summer, they’ll look like the thespian prima-donnas they are.)

CBS’s CEO makes a statement saying the strike was great! Kind of like a bad stomach flu that gets you to your bathing suit weight, CBS had no idea how much money it was wasting on writing new shows until they tightened their belts for strike time. Meanwhile, NBC leaves dozens biting their nails as Vegas’ season finale cliffhanger becomes strike casualty. (Translation: No more posh gigs for strikers.)

• Throwing a wrench into the WGA talks that neither side really needed, SAG has started talking shit about the recently-cemented DGA/AMPTP deal. SAG’s Alan Rosenberg wrote a letter to his guild warning them that the publicized details of the DGA pact were too vague to put much faith in, and that the pact may not actually be a victory on the digital download front. The DGA’s Michael Apted responded (and I’m paraphrasing), “If you don’t know the details, how come you’re sending letters, gettin’ all up our shit?”
• Variety has scant new details on Mark Romanek’s exit from Universal’s Wolfman remake: in this case, “creative differences” seem to translate to “money.”
• Oliver Stone’s not just talking about making a George Bush movie––he’s now found someone to fully finance the thing, so that it can be fast tracked into production by April, and possibly in theaters in time for the November election. Chris previously did a double take on this project here.

• Certainly the biggest news of the past 24 hours is the DGA’s three-year deal with the AMPTP, which could hopefully lead to a similar deal for the WGA, thereby ending the writer’s strike. It wasn’t that surprising, though, considering directors are used to walking in and not only finishing up but also taking the most credit for something begun by writers. I’m not actually sure if any of the DGA’s deal was based on outlines first made by the WGA, but a lot of times in Hollywood the writer’s original work is unrecognizable in the end product. Anne Thompson has the WGA’s statement regarding the DGA agreement here.
• Meanwhile the writer’s strike is affecting the UK. Look for the British to retaliate by ensuring Atonement wins every one of the BAFTA awards (including Best Animated Film). Imagine how hard-hit Hollywood will be without the ability to market their films with “BAFTA Winner” plastered on posters and in TV ads.
• Meanwhile the writer’s strike is also affecting Australia, which is being blamed more heavily than the writer’s strike for Warner Bros.’ decision to pull the plug on the Justice League movie. Look for Oz to retaliate by ensuring that Baz Luhrman’s Australia wins every one of the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards, which would probably happen anyway.
• Apparently it’s a big deal that Cloverfield and 27 Dresses are going head to head at the box office this weekend. It seems the trades want this to be about the boys’ movie versus the girls’ movie, but all the girls I know are going to see the monster movie. Maybe I don’t know the right kind of girls?

• Will the strike motivate buyers to stock up on content, or will the rough recent art house climate discourage them from picking up all but the safest work? When it comes to the marketplace at the Sundance Film Festival (which begins today), all that seems certain is that star heavy, light-leaning comedies like What Just Happened? and Sunshine Cleaning are expected to have an easier time leaving Park City with a deal. So, in other words, no news to report yet.
• AMPAS is planning two separate Oscar shows: one in case the WGA makes nice with the studios or grants them a waiver to use writers, and an “alternative” strike-proof telecast. Oscar telecast producer Gil Cates is keeping quiet on what form the “alternative” show could take, but Variety speculates that it would probably “rely on industry heavyweights penning their own speeches and presenting the awards.”
• “Anticipation of a DGA deal is amping up the pressure from all sides on the leadership of the Writers Guild,” says Dave McNary. The AMPTP is expected to hand down an offer this week, and writers are apparently threatening that they’ll resign from the WGA and go “financial core,” allowing them to go back to work without union protections, if the DGA rejects it out of hand.

• David Poland on the DGA’s snubbing of Atonement: “It’s not shocking that Joe Wright hasn’t been nominated for either of his two Oscar-chasing films. He is not a local and the films are not breathtakingly visual.” Not breathtakingly visual, huh? We imagine the Dunkirk Long-Shot Circle Jerk Club would disagree.
• Yesterday, we learned that hacky, studio-beholden critics occasionally outlive their usefulness. Today, we bring you The Best Worst Blurbs of 2007, through which Gelf Magazine attacks the marketing campaigns that twist the words of (mostly) reputable critics into blatantly misleading, top-of-the-poster one-liners. Via The Consumerist.
• Filmdrunk thinks “it’s retarded that after Fight Club becomes a phenomenon, [Chuck] Palahniuk’s next movie adaptation still gets a first-time director (not that I think he’ll do a bad job) and a budget in the single digits.” Said adaptation, Choke, premieres at Sundance next week.
• “For this one, it was kind of a hard choice between Ron or Keith, but on the basis that Keith would probably just lie down in Central park until the world stopped spinning, I figured Ron would be the better choice to rip Lady Liberty’s head clean off.” Scaramouch explains why Ron Wood beat out his bandbate Keith Richards, to make #2 on YesButNoButYes’ list of Ten Things We Hope The Cloverfield Monster really is.

• This is the true hallmark of a word-of-mouth hit: when single lines of dialogue take on a life of their own. “’I drink your milkshake’ has such Dickensian grandeur that its miniaturization in the mouths of SportsCenter anchors, scab gag writers, bloggers, and their ilk is practically a national tragedy,” writes food blogger extraordinaire Josh Ozersky. “Nonetheless, if somebody is going to do it, it’s going to be us.”
• David Carr comments on the surprises at this morning’s Director’s Guild of America nominations; his commenters comment on everything from racism in America to whether or not the Coen Brothers are lazy, or if they want “the audience to just assume people are just born evil?”
• Marc Bernadin ponders how the strike will impact ComicCon, while his colleague Annie Barrett joins me in appreciation of Conan O’Brien’s strike beard.
• Speaking of my stupid crushes on stupid stars: Michael Cera’s iTunes celebrity playlist is just ehn. I’m much more impressed with Ellen Page’s shout-out to Erik Satie.

• This year’s Sundance juries will be more star studded than I’ve seen them, particularly the Dramatic Competition Jury, which will include five boldfaced names: Quentin Tarantino, Mary Harron, Sandra Oh, Diego Luna and Marica Gay Harden. Other notable names on the other three prize-awarding panels: Eugene Jarecki, Heidi Ewing, Jason Reitman and Alan Alda.
• Marc Graser examines how the fall of the Golden Globes (which we mentioned here, but will go into in further depth later this morning) is going to have a devastating impact on the already-strike-crippled Los Angeles economy. In addition for seriously reduced paydays for party planners, photo agencies, the HFPA and NBC, there are “losses that are impossible to calculate: The film studios and networks use the event to publicize their kudos contenders.”
• Meanwhile, the strike climate may not get better before it gets worse. As Dave McNary puts it, “Despite much buzz in the blogosphere”––thanks for that––”the DGA is still far from reaching the bargaining table with studios and producers.”
• Daniel Day-Lewis, the Coen Brothers and Jonny Greenwood walked away from the Critic’s Choice Awards last night with trophies from the Broadcast Critics Association, for Best Actor, Best Picture/Best Director, and Best Score, respectively.

• As if the neverending scrapple between the WGA and the AMPTP wasn’t bad enough, enter the DGA, who are impatient to begin contract negotiations of their own. They’ve agreed to hold off their talks with the AMPTP until January in order to give the studios one last chance to hammer it out with the scribes, but after that, “With so much at stake and no end to the standoff in sight, we can no longer abdicate our responsibility to our own members.”
• Variety asks Golden Globe nominees if they’ll cross picket lines to attend the awards. David Cronenberg, James McAvoy and Mad Men star Jon Hamm (swoon) emphatically say no; two Juno nominees pretend like the strike will be over by February; and Ryan Gosling says he’ll do whatever Tom Hanks tells him to do. 
• Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the Variety review of Alvin and the Chipmunks is in! Says Joe Leydon: “New pic is the chipmunkish equivalent of Batman Begins, re-imagining the mythos while re-introducing Alvin, Simon and Theodore as madcap forest denizens involuntarily relocated to Los Angeles…Lively hip-hop and techno-pop versions of Chipmunk standards only add to the fun.” He almost makes us forget about the coprophagia.

It looks like the “battle” over Redacted is over. Brian DePalma was a guest this morning on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show. Lehrer asked DePalma to comment on the lead story on the gossip page of this morning’s NY Daily News, which is essentially a transcription of the widely-circulated video documenting Monday’s DePalma press conference at the New York Film Festival. DePalma gave a restrained recap of the situation and then said, “I exhausted my legal options about 24 hours ago.”

He was most likely referencing the alleged DGA decision that ruled Magnolia can, against the director’s wishes, release the film with black bars placed over the faces in the images in question. I say “alleged” because this DGA decision has not been reported in the trades nor confirmed by press release––I’m getting my information from comments made on Movie City Indie by Magnolia’s Eamonn Bowles and someone who appears to be DGA General Counsel David Korduner.

Regardless, this appears to be as far as DePalma is willing to fight. At the end of the segment, Lehrer asked DePalma if the battle will delay Redacted’s release date, and the director said no. “I’m afraid that controversy is over,” he sighed, clearly resigned. There’s no indication he has any plans to take Mark Cuban up on his offer to let DePalma take the film off Magnolia’s hands.

• Focus Features has accepted an NC-17 rating for Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, despite the fact that it will seriously hamper the film’s chances of reaching the audience it needs to gain critical mass come Oscar time. According to The Hollywood Reporter, although the film contains no full-frontal male nudity, “male-on-female oral sex, non-S&M restraints and several nontraditional sexual positions are depicted, conveying the aggression and emotional conflict between the main characters.”
• Unfortunately, it looks like DGA members won’t be able to enjoy any of that in the comfort of their own homes. First the Directors Guild of America said studios could send their members award season screeners; then they said they couldn’t; then they said they were planning to say they could, but now they’ve said that they can’t.
• With male and female audiences divided over the equally drecky-looking Scarlett Johansson vehicle The Nanny Diaries, and the Jet Li/Jason Statham fight pic War, Variety says SuperBad has a chance at pulling off another weekend at the top of the box office. In related news, Knocked Up is a huge hit in Australia and Russia.
• Anger Me, a documentary in which former child star/experimental filmmaker/Hollywood Babylon muckraker Kenneth Anger tells stories about his own life for two hours, earns the ultimate backhanded compliment from Variety: “Tech credits are adequate.”