There was certainly no glitz, and not an awful lot of glamour, when the winners of the 65th Golden Globe Awards were announced a few weeks ago.
Usually, the awards - seen as a precursor to the upcoming Oscars - are a big night out for the Hollywood set with everybody whose anybody turning out to walk down the red carpet and feign joy when someone else wins all the awards.
But this year things didn't exactly happen that way.
On January 7 it was announced that, due to the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, the Awards would not be telecast live.
The ceremony was faced with a threat by striking writers to picket the event and by actors threatening to boycott the ceremony rather than cross picket lines.
To counter this, and the possibility of having a star-studded event without the stars, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who run the awards, was forced to adopt another approach for the broadcast.
The end result was that the award winners were announced during a live 31-minute broadcast emanating from the Grand Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
The Golden Globes give awards for both film and television but it is the film categories which are of interest to us.
The three films which all received two awards each, were 'Atonement' starring Keira Knightley, 'Sweeney Todd - the Demon Barber of Fleet Street' starring Johnny Depp, and 'No Country for Old Men'.
'Atonement', a period love story, won the Best Film (Drama) beating off the likes of 'American Gangster, 'No Country for Old Men', 'Eastern Promises' and 'The Great Debaters'.
And while this is a huge success for 'Atonement' this feat will not be repeated come Oscar time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts are incredibly unlikely to give the golden statuette to this picture when you look at the other fantastic pictures that were released in the last twelve months.
The other award which 'Atonement' picked up was for Best Original Score, which went to Dario Marianelli.
The Golden Globes separate motion pictures into two categories - Drama and Musical or Comedy - so therefore each year two films received 'best film' awards.
This year the best 'musical or comedy' film went to 'Sweeney Todd' which stars Johnny Depp (in the title role) and Helena Bonham Carter. The only other film nominated here which may pick up an award come Oscar time is 'Juno' - a film about a girl faced with a teenage pregnancy and how she deals with the situation.
'Juno' is expected to be a hit of the same magnitude as 'Little Miss Sunshine' and may well share the success this film enjoyed.
The Best Director Golden Globe went to virtual unknown Julian Schnabel for 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' - a poignant film about a French magazine editor who, following a stroke, is paralysed and only able to move his left eyelid.
As far as directors go expect Oscar glory to go to either Ridley Scott for 'American Gangster', Tim Burton for 'Sweeney Todd' or - more than likely - Joel and Ethan Coen for 'No Country for Old Men'.
Best actor Globes went to Daniel Day Lewis (There will be Blood) and Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd)
while Julie Christie (Away from Her) and Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) won the best actress awards for drama and musical/comedy respectively.
Javier Bardem won the best supporting actor award for his role as the unstoppable killer in 'No Country for Old Men' while Cate Blanchett got the nod for her role in 'I'm Not There'.
The Coen brothers won 'Best Screenplay' for 'No Country' while the only other noteworthy film award went to Ratatouille, who beat off 'The Simpsons' and 'Bee Movie' to the best animated feature.
To be honest, I believe this year's Globes are absolutely no help in guiding us as to who might win the Oscars later in the year. But the realistic possibility still exists that there will be no glamorous Oscar ceremony this year either - unless the screenwriters strike can be resolved.
We will just have to wait and see.
