• Annalee Newitz looks at the five most prevalent themes in Clinton-era sci-fi. I would have thrown in a shout-out to strippers, who appear prominently in both Armageddon and Independence Day. But then, I’m usually on the lookout for chances to throw shout-outs to strippers.
• LIBERTAS accuses “millionaire filmmaker” Morgan Spurlock of –– SPOILER ALERT!! –– being too chicken shit to actually hunt down Osama Bin Laden and put a stake through his heart.
• Bob Rehak contemplates the impact the HD format wars will have/are already having on the porn industry. “How will viewers respond to the pathos and suffering at the industry’s core — of capitalism’s antihumanism writ large across the bodies offered up for consumers’ pleasure-at-a-distance — when those excesses are rendered in resolutions of 1920×1080?”
• NBC has decided that Access Hollywood will be the “news” division to cover the Golden Globes. Defamer mocks the ensuing outrage: “If the network had any interests but its own at heart, it would have made some attempt at incorporating the solemn ritual that usually begins each Globes ceremony–the consumption of Orson Welles’ transubstantiated body and blood in the form of filet mignon and stiff vodka-tonics–as a show of good faith.”

If you’re on the East Coast or time zones further down the clock, you may have been already out the door by the time the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and NBC finally, officially conceded their mutual defeat: there will be no Golden Globes, there will only be Golden Globe winners, announced at a one-hour press conference telecasted by––gulp––NBC News. It took several hours for the film and entertainment blog worlds to chew up this news and thoroughly spit it out. Here then, a timeline, culled from my RSS reader, of the blogosphere’s coming to terms with The Fall of Globes, without a doubt the greatest tragedy of our…week. So far.

6:02 PM EST––The Cold Hard Facts: “The mechanics of the one-hour announcement itself are muddled. The original idea was that at some point during the parties the HFPA would stop the proceedings and make the declaration of the winners. Cameras would be poised on the nominees at the different parties, so that there would be reaction from Atonement’s Keira Knightley, for example, at the Universal/Focus party. This concept was scratched by the WGA.” — Anne Thompson

7:21 PM––Let’s Focus On What’s Really Important: “Who aren’t you wearing?! … Sorta hard to have a ceremony when no stars are gonna show … we’re just sayin’.” — TMZ

…Read more

Nikki Finke says her sources tell her that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and NBC have worked out a compromise to be able to produce a Golden Globes telecast that the WGA can’t picket. Nikki’s using the word “scraped” in her headline, but that doesn’t really sound accurate at all; it seems that the show will go on, just without the montage bloat.

The plan is to apparently throw “a news event where the actors can still get all glammed up”––basically, a glorified press conference, with most of the “content” stemming from the winners’ ostensibly improvised acceptence speeches.  Presumably, such a set up would allow NBC to keep their ad revenue whilst the HFPA gets to keep both their licensing fees and a teeny-tiny shred of dignity. Even better for us the viewers, Steven Spielberg will get to accept his Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award, whilst we’ll be spared the clip reel attempt to legitimize Hook.

• Netflix will partner with LG to create a set-top box that will stream movies directly to a television without a disc or computer intermediary.  Netflix has been rumored to be working on such a thing for a loooong time, but was it worth the wait? According to the Hollywood Reporter story, the first iteration will be aimed at HD-TV owners, and may be prohibitively expensive for the average consumer.
• The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has yet to hammer out a deal with the Writers’ Guild to allow writers to work on the Golden Globes telecast, which is still tentatively scheduled for January 13. According to Dave McNary at Variety, the WGA looks so unlikely to budge that party planners and studio execs are proceding with plans on the assumption that the show will not be televised–and thus, the WGA won’t have reason to picket, and nominees and presenters will actually show up.
• Sean Penn will chair the jury of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
• THR is confirming rumors, which first hit the web last week, that Tyler Perry has been cast as the head of the Starfleet Academy in J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie. Since there doesn’t seem to be any call for  Perry’s usual makeup-aided, multi-role schtick, the casting seems like a clear ploy at broadening the remake/sequel/whatever’s built-in audience. Which makes me wonder: is this thing already so over-budget that Paramount is worried they won’t be able to manufacture a blockbuster on the shoulders of Trekkie love alone?

• Oh, the perils of being an organization built on starfucking: if the Hollywood Foreign Press Association can’t get the WGA to issue a waiver to allow writers to pen lame banter for the Golden Globes, then there’s a strong chance that most stars will refuse to cross the (real or theoretical) picket line to attend the ceremony. No stars=no photo ops=virtually no point in going through with the awards. Variety says the HFPA’s chances at landing a waver look slim, although the WGA just issued a similar pass to the SAG awards.
• In other awards news: Juno and Into the Wild lead the nominations for the Critics Choice Awards; Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, one of my favorite films of this year, and Bruce Greenwood McDonald’s The Tracey Fragments made the Toronto International Film Festival Group’s list of the Top 10 Canadian Films of the Year. Winnipeg will also open the Forum sidebar at the Berlin Film Festival in February. It’s screen alongside Green Porno, a collection of three short films by Isabella Rosselini about the sex lives of insects.
• This story is days old, but I missed it: a German producer has acquired the remake rights to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.