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.)

• Do adults actually take President’s Day off? The studios, assuming *someone* isn’t going to work or school today, opened their movies on Thursday night and are going to keep tabulating grosses through the end of today. This means Jumper will easily cross $40 million in its first frame, all but guaranteeing its franchise potential. Also, I was barely aware that it had even opened, but 27 Dresses is currently grossing about three times as much per weekend as Cloverfield, and it may even gross $100 million before it fades from theaters.
• Yawn. Variety launches their latest anti-internet screed, as Brian Lowry uses a post-strike think piece as the venue to rail against the “sometimes ugly, insular and semi-delusional worlds the Net can perpetuate.”
• Will Arnett and Woody Harrelson are joining Will Ferrell on the Funny or Die comedy tour, to promote their upcoming Semi-Pro. Too bad for you, it’s been sold out for ages.

• Informal strike talks are still slogging on––Robert Iger from Disney and Peter Chernin of News Corp will rep the AMPTP today––but without a set deadline for “officially” going back to the table, there are fears that the WGA will drag this out until June, when SAG’s contract expires, so that they can basically shut down Hollywood together until some time in the fall.
• The tech world is freaking out over Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion in cash and stock, which kind of takes the thunder from another Yahoo story from several hours before that story broke: former Warner Brothers chief Terry Semel announced he was leaving his position on the board at Yahoo. Earlier this week, Nikki Finke spread a rumor that Semel would soon leave Yahoo and possibly take over as head of New Line.
• Disney is releasing the 3D concert film Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour theatrically for one week only beginning today. The tween sensation is expected to beat the box office competition, which includes the Jessica Alba horror film The Eye, which was withheld from film critics.

• 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.

• 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.

• Today’s tale of strike woe comes from a meeting of the L.A. City Council’s Housing Community and Economic Development committee, where writers, economists and city officials (and not a single rep from the AMPTP) testified as to the wider implications of the work stoppage. Economists estimate that the strike has already cost the city of Los Angeles $342.7 million, and the tally could rise as high as $2.5 billion before it all ends. Among the sectors hardest hit is the local food industry, which contributes 13% of the city’s tax revenue.
• Sam Raimi is expected to direct New Line’s suddenly-in-the-works pair of Hobbit films, but first, he’s going to make an Evil Dead-esque “morality tale”called Drag Me To Hell.
• After barely coming to play in 2007, Hollywood studios are looking to promote their 2008 slate in a big way via Super Bowl ads. Among the scheduled highlights: Will Ferrell will appear in character in a co-branded spot, promoting both Budweiser and Ferrell’s upcoming New Line comedy, Semi-Pro. Oddly not mentioned in the Variety story, but relevant: with the writers strike heavily impacting ratings of regular programming, a massive sporting event like the Super Bowl suddenly becomes one of the only opportunities to use TV to reach a mass audience.

The Underwire spots the strike-assisted irony in that story from last week about the online release of the next installment of the Jackass franchise:

The studios are locked in a death grip with the Writers Guild of America over the future of digital entertainment. When negotiations began, the studios claimed there wasn’t yet enough money being made online for them to keep track of such new-fangled bangs and whistles. So, to prove their point that they’re not making any money online, Viacom is releasing a major feature film through the internet. Doh!

I don’t know if we can really classify a glorified blooper reel that would have gone direct to DVD anyway as “a major feature film,” but the argument’s still pretty solid. And Jackass is a particularly interesting example of the contested territory that the writers are striking over––although, I’m afraid that if I were to think too hard about someone “writing” something like the above, my brain might explode. In any case, can’t wait for the YouTube dramatization of this little twist in the saga to pop up on United Hollywood.

• The WGA has refused to grant waivers to allow guild members to script the Golden Globe and Academy Awards during the strike. Unless the strike miraculously ends by the end of January–or the producers of the shows manage to negotiate with the WGA as independent contractors–this will effectively make any star who attends either award show a picket-line crossing rat. The guild has also denied the Academy the right to use clips involving the work of their writers during the telecast.
• United Artists has pushed the release of Valkyrie, the controversial WWII drama directed by Bryan Singer and starring Tom Cruise, from July 4th weekend to October 2008. Such a move from a normal studio might indicate plans to push the film as an awards contender rather than as a summer blockbuster; in this case, it appears that Singer just hasn’t finished shooting.
• Fox is “Simpsonizing” Manhattan today, as part of a marketing blitz to promote the DVD release of The Simpsons Movie. There will be a Simpsons on Ice show at Bryant Park today, the Empire State Building will be illuminated in yellow tonight, and “giant inflatable Homers” will be sprinkled through out the city.
• Nicole Holofcener will once again team with Catherine Keener for a still-untitled dramedy about “life, death and real estate” in New York City.

• 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.

• The New York Film Critics Circle chose No Country For Old Men as their film of the year yesterday. The small body of mostly print critics also awarded prizes to Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Christie, and No End in Sight.
• The Hollywood Reporter has a long think piece on the impact of awards blogging on half-lives of award hopefuls. As usual, the blogosphere proves to be a convenient whipping boy for all manner of industry fluctuations and existential crises. There’s even a frantic quote from an unnamed publicist, who actually wonders, “What does it all mean?” Classic.
• “They lie. And then they lie again. And then they lie some more.” So begins a WGA statement, directed at the AMPTP, released yesterday in the wake of the weekend’s disastrous strike talk flameout, indicating that it’s going to be a cold day in January or February at the earliest before the two camps have cooled down enough to meet again. In related news: there will be no TV press tour this spring, because there will be (almost) no TV this spring.
• Chris Moore from Project Greenlight–you know, that reality show that had something to do with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon?–will produce a feature-length doc based on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States–you know, that book Matt Damon namedropped in Good Will Hunting?

• The Golden Compass made $26.1 million over the weekend, just over half the $50 million it would have needed to clear in its first three days to justify its $180 million budget. That makes it the fourth consecutive box office disappointment in a row for New Line; it’s also Nicole Kidman’s third flop in the last six months. Meanwhile, teen sex com in indie clothes Juno made $60k a screen on seven screens, for a $531, 399 five day weekend–more than double the per screen average of presumptive Oscar front runner Atonement, which was already doing well with $817,000 on 32 screens.
• From the “Well, I Certainly Can’t Complain About THAT” Department: over the weekend, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Online both declared There Will Be Blood the best English-language film of the year.
• Strike talks fell apart on Friday night, and they’re not expected to resume any time soon. And, with the AMPTP soon shifting focus to hammer out a deal with the DGA, it “now seems a certainty” that the strike will continue well into next year.
• The International Documentary Association named A Walk to Beautiful as their top film of the year on Friday. Though that film beat Michael Moore’s Sicko for the top prize,  the loudest man in documentary film sent his sisters, armed with a manifesto about his mission to outgross Fred Claus, to pick up a Career Achievement Award on his behalf.

• From the Is That Even Legal? file: With the writers strike seemingly neverending, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler is asking film producers “to dust off any unproduced scripts that could be turned into TV series.” The part of the story I really love? Shoddy pastiche is encouraged: “Because most movies tend to run around two hours in length, Tassler isn’t looking to produce the full scripts. Instead, she’s asking producers to identify key scenes or passages that could be filmed and cobbled together into a pilot or shorter pilot presentation.”
• China has banned the import and release of American films for at least three months. This will effectively eliminate the Chinese release of at least five major studio films, including Beowulf and Enchanted.  The Chinese government probaby, in part, is looking to lessen competition for locally-produced films; there’s also a wee chance this might have something to do with the fact that it’s kind of a crap time for U.S./China relations.
• Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney, and Jesus Camp directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing are among a host of documentary stars that have signed on to direct a segment of a doc based on Steven D. Levitt’s Freakonomics. The film is being co-produced by Seth Gordon of King of Kong fame.

• Sundance line-up: competition selections; sidebars, midnight movies, and premieres. And a preview: Isaac Julien takes on Derek Jarman.
• Butterknife updates: Swanberg salutes Ronnie Bronstein’s Gotham’s win, Karina interviews Swanberg.
• Quiet City, Frownland, and the rest of the Independent Spirit Award nominations.
• The WGA Strike: Nikki Finke predicted it was over, but several days later, it’s not. Plus, footage of the star-studded NY rally.
• This week on FilmCouch: we argue about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Dear Pillow.
• For Your Consideration ads for Jesse James: serious Oscar campaign, or contractual obligation?
• David Lynch doesn’t want to have anything to do with Hitler.
• Natalie Portman is okay with nudity, she just didn’t want to be an internet porn star.
• Movie studios have just as much right to game YouTube as fake lonely teenagers.
• Filmmakers moonlighting as ad directors: Harmony Korine, Martin Scorsese, Michel Gondry’s brother.
• A preview of Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood.
• Sonic Youth offer a classic track to the Juno soundrack.
• The Be Kind Rewind online marketing blitz.
• Why Carlos Reygadas is doomed to art film semi-fame.
• The death of the Hollywood hotspot in the age of wall-to-wall celebrity surveillance.
• Video: Joseph Gordon-Levitt likes Russian clowns a little too much.
• Is Anton Chigurh a ghost?

• The writers and the studios have lifted the press blackout on strike talks just long enough to reveal that negotiations have hit a wall, after the studios offered a deal worth “$130 million in additional compensation to scribes over three years,” and the scribes kindly asked them to suck it. In fact, according to Variety, the WGA asked for a four day moratorium to think it over, and then went to the press with a “point-by-point deconstruction of the deal points only hours after adjourning.” Talks are still scheduled to resume on Tuesday, but there are rumors that the AMPTP has about had it with the writers, and may soon switch gears to focus on hammering out a deal with the DGA.
• Variety and The Hollywood Reporter breath a collective sigh of relief over the news that yes, there will be stars at Sundance after all.
• Lions For Lambs cost $35 million to make, and is expected to barely clear $20 million domestically. Not the best start for Tom Cruise’s revamped United Artists. Cruise’s partner Paula Wagner spins it like this: “You have to look at us as a start-up company. We had zero assets. The cupboard was bare. Now we have one movie in our library, a movie we are very proud of.”
• With only one film opening in wide release this weekend, Enchanted is expected to stay on top of the box office.