No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood received eight Oscar nominations each, the most of any films that will be competing in this year's Academy Awards. Atonement and Michael Clayton each earned seven nominations. All four films were nominated for best film, along with the comedy Juno. The nominations were announced early today (Tuesday) in Beverly Hills, hours before an informal meeting was scheduled to take place between representatives of the Writers Guild of America and media executives that could determine whether the awards ceremonies would take place as usual next month. The nominations also included two for Cate Blanchett -- one for best actress for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the other for best supporting actress for her portrayal of the young Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. Also nominated for best actress were Julie Christie for Away from Her, Marion Cotillard for La Vie En Rose, Laura Linney for The Savages and Ellen Page for Juno. In the best actor category, Daniel Day-Lewis was regarded as a shoo-in for his performance in There Will Be Blood. Also competing for the honor will be George Clooney for Michael Clayton, Johnny Depp for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tommy Lee Jones for In the Valley of Elah, and Viggo Mortensen for Eastern Promises. In the director's category, the contest appeared to be a two-way affair between Paul Thomas Anderson, who helmed There Will Be Blood and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, who directed No Country for Old Men. Also competing are Jason Reitman for Juno, Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton and Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Paramount's Cloverfield added another $4.9 million to its record-setting (for January) weekend gross, to bring its total over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to $44.3 million, according to Media by Numbers. Equally impressive -- if not more so -- Fox's 27 Dresses added $4 million to its gross, bringing it to $26.8 million for the four days. And with kids out of school for the holiday, Alvin and the Chipmunks rose to third place as it took in $2.4 million and put itself just an acorn's throw away from hitting the $200 million mark. (Its gross now stands at $198.7 million.) Warner Bros.' The Bucket List continued to perform solidly with $2.1 million on Monday to bring its gross to $43.7 million, while Fox Searchlight's Juno rounded out the top five with $1.7 million. Its total gross now stands at $86.7 million

Some 6,000 persons have signed an online petition originally posted on January 5th calling for Warner Bros. to reverse its decision to abandon the HD DVD high-definition video format and go exclusively with Blu-ray. The petition refers to HD DVD's lower hardware cost and its alleged "better technological capabilities." A counter "Let HD DVD Die" petition, seemingly aimed at Paramount/DreamWorks and Universal, has also been posted and has drawn over 1,000 signatures.

Following a planned meeting this week with new Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes, New Line Cinema founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are expected to be terminated and New Line's projects, including The Hobbit, folded into Warner Bros., L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke reported on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog Monday, citing no sources. With the exception of last year's Hairspray, New Line has had a nearly uninterrupted string of financial failures since its Lord of the Rings franchise ran out.

Amid a general plunge in stock prices today (Tuesday) -- in early trading on the NYSE the Dow was down 460 points -- entertainment and media shares seemed particularly hard hit. Even after a partial market recovery at mid-day, several media companies were still posting 52-week lows, including CBS Corp., Disney, Time Warner, News Corp, and Viacom. Only G.E., which owns NBC Universal appeared to buck the overall spiral, remaining virtually flat with Monday's share price. Nevertheless, at $34.32, it stands only slightly above its 52-week low of $32.92.

With rivals CNBC and Bloomberg TV virtually taking the day off Monday for Martin Luther King Day, the new Fox Business Channel scored a major beat as it covered the plunge of overseas markets live. Its rivals were airing mostly taped programming. Reporting on the coverage, the Los Angeles Times commented today (Tuesday): "With fears of a U.S. recession taking a huge toll internationally, the "live from the stock market" hook that has looked silly in the past suddenly had a great deal of immediacy, and having reporters like Ashley Webster report live from London unexpectedly gave the fledgling channel a leg up on the competition."

The Writers Guild of America is hoping that Paramount executives returning to work following the Martin Luther King Day holiday will be greeted by a crowd of pickets worthy of a demonstration by King followers 40 years ago. On the same day that informal negotiations between the striking writers and the heads of Disney and Fox were to take place, the WGA plans to gather all its pickets into one place into a single massive demonstration. In a notice to strike captains, the WGA said, "There will be banners with labor quotes of Dr. King. Everyone who has a red Unity wristband, please wear it. We are asking picketers to bring their drums, guitars, tambourines and American flags to add to the festive affair."

Daniel Ellsberg, who was responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, revealing a pattern of government deception in the war's prosecution, has condemned the U.S. news media for failing to pick up a front-page London Sunday Times report last week in which an FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, claimed that the bureau was investigating a Turkish and Israeli group that paid corrupt U.S. officials for nuclear weapons secrets that were sold to countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Times said that it had obtained an FBI document that corroborated Edmonds's claims. In a message posted on a blog hosted by Brad Friedman, another former FBI staffer turned whistleblower, Ellsberg suggested that U.S. newspapers and television networks failed to pick up the Sunday Times story -- while it was headlined all over the world -- because the U.S. government warned editors that it might jeopardize national security. "There is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped," Ellsberg wrote, "and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts."

American Idol producers and judges are being criticized by conservative religious groups for the way 19-year-old contestant Bruce Dickson was treated during auditions in Dallas last week. Asked to share something personal about himself, Dickson replied that he had never kissed a girl, then, after judge Randy Jackson expressed disbelief, remarked, "On my wedding day, that will be my first kiss." Jackson then dismissed him with the advice, "Go kiss some girls." Host Ryan Seacrest remarked, "Maybe next year he'll come back less a boy and more a man." Contacted by CNSNews.com, a unit of the conservative Media Research Center, Dickson responded, "A real man would rather wait than just do whatever with whoever (sic)." Jason Burtt, national director of Silver Ring Thing, which promotes teen abstinence, told CNSNews that his group supports Dickson. "Most kids are mentally pushed through the media and pop culture that everyone is doing it."

Sunday afternoon's AFC championship contest between the New England Patriots and the San Diego Chargers averaged a 27.4 rating and a 48 share for Fox, up 5 percent from last year's AFC final game, according to Nielsen Media Research. With the AFC game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants having averaged a 31.7/46, up 10 percent over last year, next month's Super Bowl is in a position to draw more than 100 million viewers, some analysts have suggested. Last year's contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears averaged 92.8 million viewers.