JAYSUSAwards season here you come again, an annual tradition as immutable as Tom Sizemore getting arrested or hitting rehab. And with awards season comes some of my favorite past times: Ill-informed speculation, the trashing of movies unseen, accusations of being out of touch because a cartoon doesn't get a Best Picture nod and some more ill-informed speculation for kicks. I love it! Also, the outfits are marvelous.

Anyway, the Golden Globes has handed down a couple of rulings on films that might be of interest to those of you following the awards horse race. First up, they have said Fahrenheit 9/11 is not eligible for any award because it's a documentary and they have no spot for that. Documentaries, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association says, are not eligible for Best Picture. I don't really understand why, but that's their rule. That essentially means F91i won't be winning ANY awards, as last I checked it was taken out of Oscar running so that it could be shown on TV prior to the election. And that turned out well.

The surprise for me, though, is that the HFPA has deemed The Passion of the Christ to also be out of the running because - get this - it's a foreign language film. Their rules only allow English-language films in the running, and the Aramaic dialogue in the film ain't making the cut. That seems like an absurd distinction to make, as it's an American production and in a dead language - I can't imagine that you hold dead languages to the same standard as foreign ones. Was Quest for Fire ineligible because all the monkey people spoke monkey language (fact: it was ineligible because it sucked). I guess the movie's stars and director can compete in other categories, though - the film is only knocked out of the Best Picture race.

I have to say that this smells like side-stepping a controversy by rule-wrangling, but what do I know. The Golden Globe nominees will be announced on December 13th.