However, when the strike ended, the producers of the Oscars had a brainwave. "What's better than The Oscars That Didn't Happen?" they reasoned, "Why, The Oscars That Nobody Cares About!"

And, as such, the big winners at last night's Oscars were No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, La Vie En Rose, The Counterfeiters and Michael Clayton - a selection of films whose combined box office grosses would just about stretch to buying you a particularly nice clothes peg. Oh, and Ratatouille won an Oscar too, but hopefully the tremendous oversight of giving an award to a popular film that people actually liked will be rectified by next year.

Because this year's Oscar nominations have just been announced - and, thanks to the writers' strike, nobody even knows whether there'll even be an Oscars this year. But if the Oscars do happen, then No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood should probably get their tuxedos pressed.

And so should Atonement. Even though it's bloody Atonement.

There Will Be Blood - the film about how many words Daniel Day-Lewis can say in a funny voice within the space of two and a half hours - is really doing rather well at winning awards this year.

Although it has already won a bunch of awards already, There Will Be Blood is still gaining momentum all the time, picking up a handful of awards at Saturday night's National Society Of Film Critics awards in New York for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Cinematography. Now, the continuing success of There Will Be Blood - along with that of its rivals No Country For Old Men and Into The Wild - might make it look as if I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry has been edged out of the Oscars running, but we still live in eternal hope that Blake Clark gets the credit he deserves for imbuing Crazy Homeless Man with such dignified pathos.

Not that you'll care on the day - you'll be too busy wondering where Reese Witherspoon bought her wonderful shoes - but No Country For Old Men looks like the movie to beat come Oscar Night.

The New York Film Critics Circle yesterday announced the winners of their annual awards, and No Country For Old Men came out on top. As with all movie awards, industry experts are already analysing the results to see how the New York awards will influence the result of next year's Oscars, which already looks like a two-horse race between No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. That's at least until the East Surrey Association Of Women Who Get The Bus To The Supermarket On Thursday Mornings reveals that I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry is their choice for top movie of the year. Very influential bunch, them.

Since we'd watch a 14-hour movie about a slowly-hardening eczema scab if Daniel Day-Lewis was in, we've come to the conclusion that he's probably a fairly decent actor.

And that's not just our opinion, either - all the film critics in Los Angeles seem to think so, too. Last night was the LA Film Critics Association's turn to heap their shovel of opinion onto an already-boring awards season, and it's named There Will Be Blood, the Paul Thomas Anderson drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a rich man who speaks slowly and leaves lots of pauses in sentences where you wouldn't really expect them to, as the best film of the year. All in all at the annual vote, There Will Be Blood won four awards and came runner-up in three other categories, blowing the competition out of the water.

Don't worry, I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, we're sure you're still in with a chance somewhere, and we'll keep wearing your garish promotional baseball cap until you get the recognition you deserve.