We'll be giving you coverage of the red-carpet arrivals at the 66th annual Golden Globe Awards from midday onwards today.
Click here from 2pm onwards for live coverage from the awards ceremony itself.
KEY POINTS:
BEVERLY HILLS, California - Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise will make the long walk down 400m of red carpet into the extravagant Beverly Hilton ballroom for the 66th Golden Globes Awards today.
A few hours later they will likely leave empty-handed.
The
one actor almost certain to claim a Globe will not walk the red carpet or take a seat inside the Beverly Hills hotel's ballroom.
Just days from the anniversary of Heath Ledger's death to a prescription drug overdose, the Australian is considered such a sure bet to be named best supporting actor award for his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight, bookmakers from Las Vegas to Alice Springs are offering just a few measly cents for every dollar punters place on him for the win.
Film critics and award analysts agree. They are unanimous in backing Ledger for the win.
The Los Angeles Times surveyed 14 critics and analysts from publications including USA Today, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Us Weekly, and all 14 went for Ledger over the category's other esteemed nominees, Tom Cruise (Tropic Thunder), Robert Downey Jr (Tropic Thunder), Ralph Fiennes (The Duchess) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt).
But, be warned.
The Golden Globes may rank behind the Academy Awards in importance on the film awards calendar, but just 80 or so people cast votes for the Globes.
It is such a small sample, it's possible just 20 votes could be enough for a nominee to win.
This is compared to the 6000 members of the Academy who decide the Oscars or the 120,000 actors involved in naming the Screen Actors Guild winners.
"The Golden Globes are notoriously quirky and unpredictable," Hollywood's best known awards analyst, Tom O'Neil, wrote in the LA Times.
Despite the small voting pool maintained by the Globes' organisers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), a group reluctant to open its membership to the vast majority of foreign film and entertainment journalists in Los Angeles, the ceremony does often predict eventual Oscar winners.
In the best drama picture Globe category, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire are locked in a battle for the win.
A Globe victory will give the winning film favouritism for next month's Oscars.
Sean Penn, playing San Francisco's first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, in the acclaimed Milk, is expected to win the best actor in a drama Globe, but the actor can be surly with journalists so may have lost some HFPA votes.
Pitt, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, has a decent shot of an upset, while Hollywood's comeback story of 2008, Mickey Rourke, is an outside chance of a Globe.
The best drama actress category appears to be a three way contest between Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Streep (Doubt) and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road).
Jolie, for Changeling, is an outsider.
Slumdog Millionaire's Danny Boyle has the edge in the director race with Benjamin Button's David Fincher the challenger.
The Globes also reward TV shows and actors and two Australians, Rachel Griffiths (Brothers & Sisters) and Melissa George (In Treatment), will compete in the same category, best supporting TV actress.
The LA Times has Griffiths as the second favourite, with Laura Dern the top pick for her role in Recount.
The TV drama categories are expected to be dominated by the series Mad Men, with the show competing with Dexter, House MD, In Treatment and True Blood for best drama.
Mad Men star Jon Hamm is the favourite for the actor in a TV drama category ahead of Gabriel Byrne (In Treatment), Michael C Hall (Dexter), Hugh Laurie (House MD) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (The Tudors).
Kiwi and Oscar winner Anna Paquin is expected to add an actress in a TV drama Golden Globe to her trophy collection for her new vampire series, True Blood. The other nominees are: Sally Field (Brothers & Sisters), Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU), January Jones (Mad Men) and Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer).
The Golden Globes are scheduled to begin on Monday at 2pm NZT.
Read the full list of nominees for the 2009 Golden Globe Awards here
- AAP