The Golden Globes are dead… long die The Golden Globes.

The Wheel O’ Strategy is spinning hard at the studios these days.  A film like Hairspray, which ended up joining now-presumptive Best Picture nominees There Will Be Blood and Juno as the only multiple Critics’ Choice Award winners, is suddenly thrilled about being a nominee at the other on-air awards show this month, The SAGs.

But both the Globes Press Conference (Best Musical/Comedy/Travolta/Blonsky) and SAG arrive after Oscar nominations close.  No sale!

DGA, as usual, acts as a powerfully consistent precursor as of late, but not much of an influencer.  But you know that Team Atonement and Team Sweeney Todd are not feeling good about being left on the side of the road by the Guild.

Juno’s strategy going in was exactly not the strategy of Little Miss Sunshine… and it is working perfectly.  The film was a late entry, but it is also a smash hit at the box office (over $55 million as of this writing), has a rising star in Ellen Page, and it leaves voters no time to start getting comedy buyer’s remorse, just time to vote their heart after – as Mina said – all this death.

There Will Be Blood has been raised up by critics and now the DGA… and it has smartly avoided any kind of box office challenge, still under $2.5 million with no intention of going for much more, still on 51 screens.  Brokeback Mountain is the template for this release strategy… but at the same 14 days, Brokeback had more than double the box office of Blood.

Atonement has also tried the Brokeback road… and after 33 days, it isn’t much off of Brokeback’s pace. But it has been on more screens and like Brokeback, the strategy depends on a nomination.  Brokeback did about half of its business after January 22, this year’s nomination announcement date.  If Atonement doesn’t get the BP nod, like Dreamgirls last year, it will suffer by using this strategy.   (Of course, Dreamgirls “suffered” to over $100 million, more than the “winning” Brokeback.)  So far, Atonement is on pace with Pride & Prejudice… which is not bad… just not the target.

No Country For Old Men, as everyone has noticed, is working on all the strategic cylinders.  It has strong box office, critical acclaim, and profile.

It’s ironic, amidst all this madness, is that it is one of the best years for The Movies in a while.  Yet the conflicts of the average week seem to all remain in place.  If There Will Be Blood makes it to Best Picture, there is no doubt that it will owe the critics… and if not, confirmation that critics don’t drive the awards season.  If Juno gets a BP nod, it will seem, along with Little Miss Sunshine, to mark a group in the Academy that is younger and more susceptible to heart-warming comedy… if not, it would seem to confirm the age gap assumption.  How dark will the Academy go?  One picture, two pictures, three pictures, four?

But in terms of all these awards shows?  The loss of them all just doesn’t move the dial in terms of Oscar.  The media is more excited about them than anyone else.  And hungry for stories, especially in February, we miss them more than anyone else.

The strategies that will work are the strategies that were set months ago and… worked!  Movies that lean on Oscar and don’t get there, suffer.  But in the end, it is the movie, the movie, and the movie.  Was Sweeney Todd too late?  Was Michael Clayton too early?  Did Into The Wild miss the political wave of this election cycle by launching right before it?  Could Lars & The Real Girl have waited for December, gone limited, and done better with awards?  Was there ever a real opportunity for The Assassination of Jesse James or Zodiac… or would they have simply fallen pretty to Children Of Men disease?

Everyone is looking for answers.  Perhaps the silliest “answer” I’ve heard was comparing Atonement to Hilary Clinton.  There has not been a clear front runner ever in this season and if there was one, it was the Media’s… as usual.  (Few things are more irritating or harder to stop than the Media deciding to accuse movies of being cocky or selling too hard.  It is like the whores complaining about the john expecting sex.)  Moreover… nothing changed for Atonement.  The possible analogy is Barack Obama, as a popular candidate that people don’t really know until they are about to vote is much more what happens in these awards races.  But will he win or lose?  And when a film falls out, it is more like Howard Dean… the candidate remaining the same, but one silly event being dramatically blown out of proportion.

Like the Globes…