Who Wasn't Nominated for a Globe?

Assuming there is a Golden Globes, planners better order extra tables.

Seven films, from A (for Atonement) to T (for There Will Be Blood, were nominated Thursday for Best Drama as awards season's biggest pre-Oscar race named its horses.

Other categories were almost as crowded, with six TV shows up for Best Drama Series and and a septet of small-screen stars up for Best Drama Series Actress. (See complete list of Globe nominations.)

With the Hollywood Foreign Press showering so much love on so many, snubs for the likes of Desperate Housewives, 24, Heroes and The Sopranos' James Gandolfini, all high-profile no-shows in the TV categories, and Russell Crowe, passed over for American Gangster, were all the more glaring.

Overall, the British period drama Atonement led the way with seven nominations, including one in the packed Best Drama category, where it'll try to elbow out the drug-lord tale American Gangster; the tattooed Eastern Promises; the Denzel Washington-directed, Oprah Winfrey-produced The Great Debaters; the principled Michael Clayton; and the critics' pets, the Coen brothers' thriller No Country for Old Men and the Paul Thomas Anderson oil saga There Will Be Blood.

The Musical/Comedy field sports the traditional number of nominees, five: the Beatles-tuned Across the Universe, the Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts political yarn, Charlie Wilson's War, the all-dancing, all-bopping Hairspray, the deadpan Juno and the all-singing, all-bloodletting Sweeney Todd.

Charlie Wilson's War, heretofore a small-time player in the year-end awards, was the second-biggest Globe nominee, with five. No Country for Old Men, which dominated the New York Film Critics' Circle Awards, stayed on the Oscar track with four nominations. Sweeney Todd and Michael Clayton also had four each.

In TV, two shows that, judging by their ratings, were unfamiliar to most viewers were the biggest nominees: FX's legal drama Damages and the HBO TV movie Longford, with four each.

Damages will compete for the Drama Series Globe against the extremely little-watched Big Love, Mad Men and The Tudors. House and Grey's Anatomy sneaked themselves, and their sizable fan bases, into the category, too.

In the Comedy Series race, two pay-cable shows with devoted but tiny audiences, Californification and Extras, will face one pay-cable show with big buzz but smallish ratings, Entourage, and two broadcast network shows, 30 Rock and Pushing Daisies, that would kill for Two and a Half Men's Nielsen numbers.

The film categories aren't exactly filled with box-office favorites, either.

Michael Clayton, for one, never found much of an audience for its ethical dilemma, but George Clooney still found his latest Globes nomination, for Drama Actor.

Clooney is up against Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood), James McAvoy (Atonement), Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises) and Washington, in the game for American Gangster, not his upcoming The Great Debaters.

Owing to his recent wins in the New York and L.A. critics awards, antistar Day-Lewis is probably the category frontrunner, although the race is far harder to call than last year, when Forest Whitaker won everything on his way to the Oscar for The Last King of Scotland.

The Drama Actress category, likewise a pick-'em race once again after last year's Helen Mirren sweep for The Queen, pits critical favorites Julie Christie (Away from Her) and Kiera Knightley (Atonement) against box-office queen Jodie Foster (The Brave One), and Globes favorites Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart) and Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age). Knightley is the only non-Oscar owner in the bunch.

The Musical/Comedy acting categories feature bigger movies, if not always bigger names.

Hairspray newcomer Nikki Blonsky, Enchanted's on-the-rise Amy Adams and Sweeney Todd's Helena Bonham Carter are up for Comedy/Musical Actress opposite Ellen Page, for her buzz-making performance in the indie hit Juno, and French star Marion Cotillard, for her rendering of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.

Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd) and Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson's War) lend their brand names to the Comedy/Musical Actor category. Onetime Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages), Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl) and, in this year's Sacha Baron Cohen spot for unapologetic comedic performance, John C. Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) round out the field.

Hoffman and Blanchett were both double nominees.

In addition to Drama Actor, Hoffman is up in the Supporting Actor category for Charlie Wilson's War. His competition there: Casey Affleck, for the otherwise ignored The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Javier Bardem, for No Country for Old Men; Tom Wilkinson, for Michael Clayton; and John Travolta, for getting in touch with his feminine side in Hairspray.

In addition to Drama Actress, Blanchett is a Supporting Actress nominee for her gender-bending take on Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. Others in the category include 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), veterans Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) and Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton), and Globe perennial Julia Roberts (Charlie Wilson's War).

Aside from the Crowe exclusion, the film acting categories featured few surprises, weighting heavily toward A-listers who know how to charm at Hollywood Foreign Press Association junkets (a factor that could explain the Crowe exclusion, come to think of it).

A complete absence of Desperate Housewives housewives and Heroes heroes was surprising in the TV acting categories, although less so in the case of Heroes, which fell to Earth during a prolonged sophomore slump.

With Wisteria Lane's leading ladies on the sidelines, the Musical/Comedy Series Actress field was comprised of reigning Ugly Betty champ America Ferrera, 30 Rock's Tina Fey, Samantha Who?'s Christina Applegate, Pushing Daisies' Anna Friel and Weeds' Mary-Louise Parker.

30 Rock's Alec Baldwin can repeat as Musical/Comedy Series Actor, provided he secures more votes than The Office's Steve Carell, Californication's David Duchovny, Pushing Daisies' Lee Pace and Extras' Ricky Gervais, who created the British show that spawned the U.S. remake that led to Carell's rival nomination.

The Sopranos' James Gandolfini, an upset loser at the Emmys, won't be abused by the Globes. Unless not getting nominated at all constitutes being abused. In any case, the Gandolfini-free Drama Series Actor field consists of Dexter's Michael C. Hall, House's Hugh Laurie, The Tudors' Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Big Love's Bill Paxton and Mad Men's Jon Hamm.

Everybody appeared to be nominated for Drama Series Actress, specifically, Medium's Patricia Arquette, Damages' Glenn Close, The Riches' Minnie Driver, The Sopranos' Edie Falco, Brothers & Sisters' Sally Field, Saving Grace's Holly Hunter and The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick. If you were not nominated, please don't complain to your agent until you first verify you were actually on a series this past season.

With two nominations, Grey's Anatomy can't really complain, but it can't really feel like its old hot self, either.

Katherine Heigl, passed over in the film category for her breakout role in Knocked Up, was the lone Seattle Grace staffer to rate an individual nod. She's in the far-flung TV supporting actress category opposite Damages' Rose Byrne, Brothers & Sisters' Rachel Griffiths, My Name Is Earl's Jaime Pressly and telepic players Samantha Morton (Longford) and Anna Paquin (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee).

For a change, Entourage's Jeremy Piven has competition in the TV supporting actor field from one of its costars, Kevin Dillon. The other nominees: Damages' Ted Danson, Dirty Sexy Money's Donald Sutherland and Longford's Andy Serkis, finally freed from his Gollum guise.    

The one category where stars didn't rate with Globe voters was Best Director, where Ben Affleck, Sean Penn and Denzel Washington were overlooked in spite of strong reviews, and in Washington's case, a Best Drama nomination, for Gone Baby Gone, Into the Wild and The Great Debaters, respectively.

Artist-director Julian Schnabel, nominated for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is the closest thing to a multihyphenate in the race, unless you count writers-directors Joel and Ethan Coen, who nabbed, yes, writing and directing nods for No Country for Old Men. Also nominated for Best Director: Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd), Ridley Scott (American Gangster) and Joe Wright (Atonement).

Here's a look at some other Globes storylines:

• Sure, Washington might have liked a shot at Best Director. And, sure, he (and Oprah) might have liked a shot at a lot of other nominations, too. But the one and only nod the real-life drama about a 1930s college debate club did get was a big one that'll look nice in ads for the film, due out Christmas Day. 
• The Iraq War not only brought down President Bush's poll numbers, but a couple of Oscar campaigns. The big-studio, big-name, Iraq-era dramas Lions for Lambs and Rendition were shut out.
• Aaron Sorkin is nicely recovered from Studio 60, thankyouverymuch. In addition to his current Broadway play, The Farnsworth Invention, the prolific one has a screenplay nod for Charlie Wilson's War.
• Judd Apatow's comedy brand was hard to miss at the multiplex this year. But there was no Globe love for Knocked Up or Superbad, both critical and box-office hits, only for the upcoming Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which earned two nods, including one for the title song "Walk Hard," cowritten, in part, by Apatow and nominated star Reilly.
• What do Clint Eastwood and Eddie Vedder have in common, besides not much? Double nominations in the music categories. Pearl Jam frontman Vedder's up for his contributions to Into the Wild; jazz enthusiast Eastwood's up for giving a beat to Grace Is Gone, the one Iraq War drama that wasn't entirely ignored.
• Debra Messing used to get annual nominations for Will & Grace. This year, she picked up a Miniseries/Movie Actress nod for The Starter Wife.
• Second-generation star Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron Howard, earned her first Globe nomination, in the Miniseries/Movie Actress category, for HBO's As You Like It. Mamie Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep, didn't have the same luck with the bypassed Evening.
• Last week, a Grammy nomination; this week, a Globe nomination for Queen Latifah for Miniseries/Movie Actress for HBO's Life Support.
• The snubbed Desperate Housewives has plenty of company at the top of the Nielsen ratings. CSI, TV's most popular drama, and Two and a Half Men, TV's most popular half-hour comedy, likewise weren't nominated. For anything.

The 65th Annual Golden Globes are scheduled for Jan. 13 in Beverly Hills, provided the writers' strike doesn't hinder plans—and a picket line doesn't keep limos and their A-list occupants away from the show, to be broadcast on NBC.

Get the complete list of nominees.

(Originally published Dec. 13, 2007 at 6:16 a.m. PT.)