The Golden Globes will begin in 15 minutes, and two happenings may or may not make them a semi-noteworthy event (or at least, you know, something to talk about tomorrow): (a) Ricky Gervais‘s opening monologue and (b) The King’s Speech winning the Best Motion Picture, Drama…or not. That’s it — the whole show in a nutshell. Here are yesterday’s Gold Derby predictions.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck did it, aided and abetted by Angelina Jolie. Florian was too mood-obsessed, too focused on style, too willing to flatter the big-star aura of Jolie and costar Johnny Depp. That’s the conclusion from The Daily Beast‘s Nicole Laporte about why The Tourist was such a stinker.

Von Donnersmarck “was not interested [in] a generic thriller,” an anonymous source tells LaPorte. “He was interested in making a movie that was about elegance and the glamour of stars. It was not supposed to be a hard-edged thriller. He wanted to make a style piece. That may have been a miscalculation.”

Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik‘s immediate reaction to last weekend’s Gabrielle Gifford shooting was that Tea Party rage had inflamed the atmosphere in Arizona and probably influenced unstable hinterland types like Jared Lee Loughner. “The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous,” he said — a reasonable view from my perspective. And yet the right’s big-lie machine managed to discredit Dupnik’s view within 48 hours.

Their counter-attack, as always, was swift, focused, adamant, well-coordinated. “Who, us?,” they basically said. “The left is just as bad if not worse for charging that the furious, violence-implying, armed-militia tone of rightwing rhetoric since Obama’s inauguration had anything do with this nutter’s actions…how dare they suggest that we’re anything but blameless? We can inflame the political conversation as much as we want to with cries of ‘reload’ and references to Second Amendment solutions and crosshair symbols. That is our right as exceptional Americans!”

Truthout‘s Steve Striffler noted two days ago that “we are now told that because [Loughner’s] political views do not fall seamlessly into a neat box labeled ‘left’ or ‘right’ that they were irrelevant for understanding events in Arizona and, by connection, for understanding the current political situation in the United States. [For] holding muddled political views does not in and of itself necessarily make Loughner mentally ill, unstable, crazy, or even particularly unusual. It makes him American and peculiarly so.”

The likelihood that Tuscon shooter Jared Lee Loughner “was…insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no effect on him or other crazed loners out there,” says N.Y Times columnist Frank Rich in today’s column. “Nor does Loughner’s insanity mitigate the surge in unhinged political zealots acting out over the last two years.

“President Obama said, correctly, on Wednesday that “a simple lack of civility” didn’t cause the Tucson tragedy. It didn’t cause these other incidents either. What did inform the earlier violence — including the vandalism at Giffords’s office — was an antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s.

“A few unexpected voices have expressed alarm. After an antigovernment gunman struck at Washington’s Holocaust museum in June 2009, Shepard Smith of Fox News noted the rising vitriol in his e-mail traffic and warned on air that more ‘amped up’ Americans could be “getting the gun out.” The former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum took on the ‘reckless right’ that August, citing the incident at the Giffords Safeway event. But when a Department of Homeland Security report warned of far-right extremism and attacks by ‘lone wolves’ that same summer, Gingrich called it a smear and John Boehner demanded an apology.

“Last week a conservative presidential candidate, Tim Pawlenty, timidly said it wouldn’t be his ‘style’ to use Palin’s target map, but was savaged so viciously by his own camp that he immediately retreated. A senior Republican senator told Politico that he saw the Tucson bloodbath as a ‘cautionary tale’ for his party, yet refused to be named.

“What are they and their peers so afraid of? No doubt that someone might reload — the same fears that prompted Gabrielle Giffords to speak up, calmly but firmly, last March. Unless and until they can match her courage and speak out too, it’s hard to see what will change.”

The always electric and captivating Susannah York, 72, died earlier today from cancer. I fell in love with her performance as Meg, the daughter of Paul Scofield‘s Sir Thomas More, in Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons (’66), and was pretty much hooked from then on. One of her best scenes in that film begins around the 2:20 mark.

York’s eyes were wonderful. Gleaming, teasing. They always knew. And then you add that delicious smile. She always conveyed adult intrigue, exceptional perception. At times a certain melancholy crept into her features, but it was always mitigated by hints of need, playful intelligence and, of course, erotic insinuation.

Born in 1939, York enjoyed an unusually long run — 18 years — in first-rate films of her day. The list began with Ronald Neame‘s Tunes of Glory (’60) and continued with John Huston‘s Freud (’62), Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones (’63), A Man For All Seasons, Robert Aldrich‘s The Killing of Sister George (’68), Sydney Pollack‘s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (’69 — Best Supporting Actress nominated), Robert Altman‘s Images (’72 — Best Actress, Cannes Film Festival), Jerzy Skolimowski‘s The Shout, and — the end of the really good stuff — Daryl Duke‘s The Silent Partner (’78).

For some reason my two favorite York performances after A Man For All Seasons were in The Shout (a strong sexual current with Alan Bates , or so I recall) and — don’t laugh — Kaleidoscope with Warren Beatty.

I’m sorry she’s gone — 72 is far from elderly — but for actresses of York’s calibre quality of achievement is as important, perhaps more so, than the number of years spent on the planet.

At 3:30 am New York time Nikki Finke reported that Ron Howard‘s The Dilemma has, like, tanked. It did $6 million yesterday with a shot at $20 million by the end of the Martin Luther King holiday.

That’s “shockingly soft,” she says, if you compare to opening grosses of Vaughn’s Four Christmases ($31 million) and Couples Retreat ($34 million) and James’ Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($31 million) and Grown-Ups ($40 million).

Like I said on Thursday, it’s the movie and not the guys. People are smelling what this film is putting out and it’s not going down all that well — end of story.

Michel Gondry‘s The Green Hornet did around $10.5 million yesterday and is looking at $35 million by the end of the four-day weekend. That’s low, of course. The buzz is awful so what else could have happened?

Reactions to either?

Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan will take in just under $10 million by Monday night for an estimated cume of $73.8 million. How far can it go?

Watching my Ishtar Bluray the other night led me to Peter Biskind‘s September 2010 Vanity Fair piece about the making of that misbegotten (but now forgiven in most quarters) 1987 film. And while I’ve read Biskind’s Beatty autobiography and should have some memory of this, I came upon an anecdote that sank in because it contains — I’m not exaggerating — perhaps the most eloquent and half-touching rationale for promiscuity I’ve ever heard or considered. And conveyed in only four words.

Biskind got the story from Ishtar costar Dustin Hoffman.

“Despite his growing difficulties with [director Elaine] May, Beatty never complained about her — except once. He and Hoffman were in the desert, along with 150-odd extras. He took his co-star aside and started venting.

“‘Warren was going off about how painful it was to make this movie with Elaine,’ Hoffman recalls. ‘He said, ‘I was going to give this gift to Elaine, and it turned out to be the opposite. I tried this and I tried that…’ He was so passionate, but in the middle of it — it’s like he had eyes in the back of his head, because there was some girl walking by, maybe 50 yards away, in a djellaba. He turned and froze, just watched her. I mean, this was while he was producing and everything was going in the toilet. But he couldn’t help it.’

Finally, Beatty turned back to Hoffman and asked, ‘Where was I?’

“‘Warren, let me ask you something,’ Hoffman said. ‘Here everything is going wrong on this movie that you planned out to be a perfect experience for Elaine, and here’s a girl that you can’t even see a quarter of her face because of the djellaba — what is that about?”

“‘I don’t know.’

“‘Let me ask you something else. Theoretically, is there any woman on the planet that you would not make love to? If you had the chance?’

“‘That’s an interesting question: Is there any woman on the planet’ — Beatty paused and looked up at the sky — ‘that I wouldn’t make love to? Any woman at all?’

“Hoffman continues: ‘He repeated the question, because he took it very seriously. This problem with the production was now on the back burner, and it was like he was on Charlie Rose.’

“‘Yes, any woman,’ said Hoffman.

“‘That I wouldn’t … ?’ said Beatty. ‘No, there isn’t.’

“‘Theoretically, you would make love to any and every woman?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘You’re serious.’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Why?’

“‘Why?’

“Hoffman: ‘He was thinking. He was searching for the right words. ‘Because…you never know.’ I thought that was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard a man say, because he was talking about spirits uniting. And then it was ‘Where was I? I just don’t know what to do about Elaine…’ But this took precedence.’

“Hoffman was right,” Biskind concludes. “Beatty was searching for perfection. It was the same passion that fueled his prodigious appetite for takes: ‘because…you never know.'”

There are always little things that people do that faintly irritate others. So faintly that they barely register, and are certainly not worth mentioning in mixed company. To casually do so would suggest a petty and neurotic nature, and who wants that? But this is a Saturday morning and very little is going on. Remember Holden Caulfield sitting on that bus and noticing the way a guy is trying to hide that he’s picking his nose? We all think this stuff.

I inwardly flinch (i.e., not so you’d notice) whenever I see a cluster of eight or ten people standing or walking together. It’s ever-so-vaguely threatening and it invites a faint feeling of contempt. The herd instinct is one of the lowest imaginable behaviors, connoting fear and/or uncertainty and a general lack of Gary Cooper-like qualities. I’ve always rebelled, even when I was five, against the idea of huddling with any group, for any reason. I would huddle for warmth, I suppose, but that hasn’t happened yet and what are the odds at this stage?

I also don’t care for anyone who takes little baby sips out of a bottle of any liquid. I’m talking about raising a bottle for no more than a second and sipping maybe half a jigger’s worth of beer or Coke or whatever. I scowl ever so slightly when I see this. Actors always baby-sip, perhaps having been taught this in acting school. (Or because they don’t want to take 15 or 20 man-swigs should the director ask for that many takes.) I only know that it looks spazzy. If you’re going to sip something, do it like Bill Murray would, with a certain leisurely cool. Don’t be weird or herky-jerky. Tilt your head back and sip a little more slowly and allow a little more liquid — a healthy half-mouthful, say, or roughly two jiggers worth — to slide in and be savored. Now that I’ve written this it’s going to be all the harder to deal with baby-sippers.

What could happen at tomorrow night’s Golden Globe telecast that would turn heads? A surprise win, I suppose, but it wouldn’t matter much in the greater scheme. No one cares about the preferences of this utterly discredited bunch. It’ll be okay if they give the Best Motion Picture, Drama award to The King’s Speech, as some are predicting. Tom Hooper‘s film will enjoy a gratifying nationwide moment. And good on Annette Bening if, as expected, she wins the Best Actress, Comedy or Musical award for her performance in The Kids Are All Right.

The only things that will matter are (a) Ricky Gervais‘ opening monologue and (b) a winner flubbing it in some small way during their acceptance speech. But who would? They’re all aware, of course, that everyone will be watching precisely to see if anyone pulls a Mickey Rourke, and I can’t imagine anyone being that reckless. Christian Bale won’t go there. He’ll more or less repeat what he said at last night’s Critics Choice Awards, something sincere, restrained and on the money.

In a recent interview with Ryan Seacrest on KIIS-FM, Gervais reportedly said “I’m going to go all out this time…I’m going to make sure they’re never going to invite me back.”

Update: As expected, The Social Network, The Fighter The King’s Speech (particularly Best Actor winner Colin Firth) and Black Swan‘s Natalie Portman were the big-time winners at tonight’s Critics Choice Awards.

Network won for Best Picture, Best Director (David Fincher ) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin). Portman won for Best Actress. The Fighter ‘s Melissa Leo and Christian Bale won for Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively, and the cast won the Best Ensemble award. The Original Screenplay award went to David Seidler for The King’s Speech.

Earlier: I’ll be semi-live blogging the Critics Choice Awards, which are about to begin in Los Angeles. I’ve never really watched this show but I’m a BFCA member, etc. A first time for everything. I think I’ll stay on this entry and expand as I go.

9:08 pm: Schwarzenegger’s monologue…meh. Montage of film clips from year’s best films…shrug. Ashton Kutcher‘s dismissive riff about Schwarzenegger…needlessly negative.

9:11pm: The Fighter wins the Best Ensemble Award. Works for me. Does this indicate a Best Supporting Actress win for Melissa Leo (who looks great, by the way, with darker hair and a black pants suit)?

9:14 pm: True Grit‘s Hailee Steinfeld wins for Best Younger Actor (or Young Emerging Actor or whatever it’s called). She’s the best thing about Joel and Ethan Coen‘s film so fine, cool.

9:20 pm: Eva Mendes presenting the Best Supporting Actor award. Gotta be Bale, gotta be Bale, gotta be, gotta be…Christian Bale for The Fighter. “Dickie’s winning this as well…for his buoyancy and passion for this…and for Alice…give it up for David O. Russell…Paramount, Relativity…every single crew member…such a good spirit…I couldn’t do this without my wife and my beautiful daughter.”

9:25 pm: Ed Helms presenting Best Action Movie award. Inception, right? Yes, Inception.

9:36 pm: Davis Guggenheim and Lesley Chilcott‘s Waiting for Superman wins for Best Documentary. Hope, inspiration and constructive positivism in the classroom triumphs over the the exacting true-bullet indictment that is Inside Job.

9:39 pm: I know that much of dramatic television is smarter and truer than the content of most feature films, but I’m going to bypass the winners in this realm. No offense.

9:49 pm: The winner of the Critics Choice Best Comedy award is…Easy A? Really? The winner of the Best No-Laugh-Funny Dramedy is Greenberg. (Kidding…although it really deserves to win something.) And the winner of the Best Animated Feature award, of course, is Toy Story 3. Director Lee Unkrich thanks everyone. Fine, solid, down with that.

10:13 pm: True Grit‘s Josh Brolin presenting the Best Supporting Actress award. Melissa Leo wins! Called it, felt it, knew it. Her speech was simple, dignified, honest.

10:18 pm: The Best Adapted Screenplay award goes, of course, to Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network. Best Original Screenplay award goes to David Seidler for The King’s Speech. “If you’ve been a stutterer and could not speak, it is wonderful to be heard.”

10:31 pm: Greg Kinnear presenting the Best Director award to David Fincher for The Social Network. Fincher isn’t there, Kinnear accepts for him. Right on top of this Jimmy Kimmel and Emily Blunt come out to present an altruism award — the Joel Siegel Award — to Matt Damon for www.water.org. “For just $25 you can bring clean water to a kid for life,” Damon says. “Feel free to join us.” Kimmel’s mock put-downs of Damon during the intro were the funniest lines of the show so far, and Damon zaps him back pretty nicely.

10:41 pm: Julianne Moore presenting the Best Actor award, and the Critics Choice award goes to — knock me down with a pinky push — Colin Firth for The King’s Speech. “Actors — I — have a need for attention and approval that borders on the infantile. I will be wearing this [award] around my neck as a talisman, to give me magical powers.”

10:51 pm: Kevin Spacey presenting the Best Actress award — suspense, suspense. And the award goes to Natalie Portman. A very gracious speech. Relaxed. Hits all the right notes. “Darren, you made me skinny and you’re also indirectly responsible for making me fat.” A tough world, Annette Bening — but there’s always the Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical.

10:59 pm: The great Jane Fonda presenting the Critics Choice Award for Best Picture. Of course…The Social Network! And the whole gang takes the stage. And producer Mike DeLuca — Mike! — has the honor of delivering the acceptance speech.

Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay for The Social Network was made available a few hours ago on Sony’s Social Network site.

The spiking of Cari Beauchamp‘s 5000-word Vanity Fair piece about the aggressive Hollywood reporting wars between Deadline‘s Nikki Finke, TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Janice Min was not, I’m told, a “space issue.” Earlier today N.Y. Post media columnist Keith J. Kelly quoted “sources” saying that the story was killed “because it wasn’t catty enough…they wanted a catfight story.” He also ran an official Vanity Fair explanation that “with so many articles trying to get into the issue, it didn’t make the cut.”

Late this afternoon a person who had contact with Beauchamp during her research said that the Vanity Fair quote is bullshit. There was, I gather, some reticence from at least one of the subjects (and perhaps from all three) about participating in a story that, it was feared, might have become a semi-demeaning caricature — a chronicle of tempestuous personalities, perhaps something in the vein of those old Hedda-vs.-Louella duels of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, three tough cyber-journalists overdoing the avarice in trying to out-scoop and out-maneuver each other, etc. Beauchamp tried to allay concerns by offering assurances that article would be a business piece, but toward the end, my source contends, it devolved into something that Beauchamp wouldn’t put her name on.

Beauchamp’s story would have appeared in VF‘s annual Hollywood issue, which will be out on February 2nd.

Since last summer’s Sad Keanu meme, Keanu Reeves has starred in Mark Mann‘s Generation Um…, spoken about wanting to make another Bill and Ted movie (middle-aged air guitar) and is moving forward on a 47 Ronin flick that sounds real. I’ve had this idea that The Day The Earth Stood Still hurt him, but that awful film grossed $230 million worldwide so it’s not like Keanu’s in “movie jail,” so to speak.