Tonight is the 2012 Golden Globes Awards Ceremony Thingy! We all know that in the grand scheme of things these accolades mean absolutely nothing (aside from the fact that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association loves hanging with the stars), but they’re still fun conversation starters and occasionally hint at who and what will win an Oscar. With that enthusiasm in mind, let’s get to the winners! In bold below! With the word ‘winner’ beside it!

Usually I’m quite cynical about end-of-year lists, as they demand a forced encapsulation of an arbitrary block of time that is not yet over into something simplified. I typically find end-of-year lists fun, but rarely useful. But 2011 is different. As Scott Tobias pointed out, while “quiet,” this was a surprisingly strong year for interesting and risk-taking films. What’s most interesting has been the variety: barely anything has emerged as a leading contender that tops either critics’ lists or dominates awards buzz. Quite honestly, at the end of 2010 I struggled to find compelling topics, trends, and events to define the year in cinema. The final days of 2011 brought a quite opposite struggle, for this year’s surprising glut of interesting and disparate films spoke to one another in a way that makes it difficult to isolate any of the year’s significant works. Arguments in the critical community actually led to insightful points as they addressed essential questions of what it means to be a filmgoer and a cinephile. Mainstream Hollywood machine-work and limited release arthouse fare defied expectations in several directions. New stars arose. Tired Hollywood rituals and ostensibly reliable technologies both met new breaking points. “2011” hangs over this year in cinema, and the interaction between the films – and the events and conversations that surrounded them – makes this year’s offerings particular to their time and subject to their context. This is what I took away from this surprising year:

What is Movie News After Dark? Every night, it brings to you a collection of movie and pop culture news that will thrill you, chill you and if you’re not careful, spill you all over the floor. Tonight it takes on a new look — instead of the usual news-news-news-poster-news-news-news-video format, it’s almost all movie posters We begin this evening with a shot of Wonder Woman giving herself a breast exam. Earlier this week, someone told me that my nightly meanderings through the world of pop culture news needed to be sexier. What could be sexier than the fight against breast cancer? Nobody’s immune, people.

We take these things for granted (until there’s a writer’s strike), but it seems natural that every January, there will be a Golden Globes presentation where actors get drunk and start yelling at each other while brandishing blunt metal objects. In fact, they should make a reality show out of it. Sadly, the awards show where the awards mean about as much as the points on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, might not air in 2012 because of a legal dispute that threatens to keep them in court either right up to December 2011 or well into March of 2012. One date would leave too little time to secure advertisers and network contracts while the other date leaves a 2012 show out the question completely. The case is between the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and show producer Dick Clark Productions. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the HFPA believes that Dick Clark Productions is attempting to take over complete control of the show by working a deal with NBC to produce the show through 2018 without the HFPA’s knowledge. Both are trying to get the trail date moved up, but if the show skips a year, it might give everyone time to forget they hate Ricky Gervais. Then they can hire him to tell hilarious jokes and people can feign shock despite being in on them from the beginning.

Quite a fuss has been made of Sunday night’s Golden Globes ceremony. Not the actual awards mind you – everything was safe and predictable in that arena. Not even the obvious drunkenness or awkward attempts at humor with varying degrees of success by the night’s celebrity award winners and presenters are the primary subject of the conversation (De Niro’s bizarre acceptance speech, Robert Downey Jr’s creepy framing of the Best Actress category). All discourse has been centered on the performance by the show’s host, Ricky Gervais. Gervais’s acerbic monologue was met with audible surprise and even aghast by his elite audience. His introductions to awards presenters ranged from tongue-in-cheek playfulness to blatant comic criticism. He later disappeared for more than an hour, prompting speculation on Twitter (the only place where aside observations can immediately morph into conspiracy theory) that he was taken off the show, only to emerge later, without his jacket and appearing vexed, to give quite the backhanded introduction to Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, which all-in-all does suggest at least a firm backstage talking-to. With strangely perfect timing, Gervais ended the show with the line, “And thank you to God for making me an atheist” before the generic end credits music surged. The Buñuelean echo of these final words was a rather appropriate summation of Gervais’s brilliant absurdity and anarchic irreverence peppered throughout this masturbatory rich-ual (get it?). It was, in short, hilarious and the best thing about the show. Here’s his monologue:

To get more hits on this article, I considered calling it “Ricky Gervais & The Golden Globes, Sandra Bullock nude, Ryan Reynolds break up, chicken fight.” But we’re above that sort of stuff here at FSR, or at least that’s what I’m told when all my work gets edited down. Anyway, some of you reading this may care about awards shows. If that’s you, then you probably watched the Golden Globes on Sunday and I feel bad for you because why do you care about awards shows? Did you win your office pool? Nice/Better luck next time. So if you watched the show, or just read about it later, you know that comedian Ricky Gervais is catching some heat over his presentation. Apparently a few celebrities and some Hollywood Foreign Press members (who put on the show) thought that his jokes and barbs crossed a line, proving they don’t know who Ricky Gervais is.

I love the Golden Globes despite never wanting to watch them. They are irrelevant in a way that’s completely freeing – meaning that the host can get drunk, the honorees can get drunk, and a lot of yelling can take place during the celebration. I imagine it’s a lot like what the Oscars used to be before they were ever televised. Don’t get me wrong. For the winners, it’s an auspicious occasion. It’s one more group (a diverse one at that) honoring great work done. For movie fans though, the broadcast is pure spectacle, and as someone who has stood next to Foreign Press members asking about what type of underwear Daniel Radcliffe wears, it’s also difficult to take the night all that seriously. Here in the sober light of day, are the winners. Feel free to speculate as to what this means for the Oscars.

This week, on a very special episode or Reject Radio, Landon Palmer attempts to explain why his fascination with nun orgies hasn’t gotten his Masters degree taken away from him.

The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards are upon us. And while they are on live on ABC as of 8/7c, you may not be watching them. That’s okay, as I will updating our list with the winners as they are announced.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the nominations for The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards. But that’s not all!

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced their nominees for the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards today, laying out what is generally regarded as a relatively accurate precursor to the Academy Awards nominations.

The folks over at FunnyorDie have put together a little parody of what the Golden Globes Red Carpet should have been like…

Didn’t get a chance to see the Golden Globes Telecast on the TV Guide network? We did. And trust us, you didn’t miss much…

NBC has announced that the telecast of the Golden Globe Awards has been cancelled. They will replace the show with an hour-long Press Conference.

NBC pays $5 million a year in license fees for the right to air the Golden Globes, so even without actors they are still going to air the show.

It seems that this would be the best time for WGA to wield its formidable leverage and get pretty much what they want.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and their Golden Globe Awards are certainly important this time of year — but they are no Academy Awards.

Those who write the jokes are members of the WGA. So what happens if the strike lasts until February 24?