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Martin Scorsese's film about the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, will open the Berlin Film Festival. PHOTO: EPA

There was no traditional Hollywood hangover Monday after a spectacularly underwhelming Golden Globes failed to generate much excitement and even fewer parties.

In contrast to the usual champagne-flowing extravaganzas attended by stars done up in the finest fashions, the only Golden Globe after party worth a mention in the press was a beer and sandwich get-together at the home of 90-year-old nominee Ernst Borgine.

The reason for the low profile night was the screen writers' strike, which entered its 11th week Monday, as writers and producers continued to disagree about payments for TV shows and films distributed over the Internet. The writers had threatened to picket if the Golden Globes ceremony went ahead as normal, and the Screen Actors Guild had refused to cross picket lines to attend, keeping away the stars who are the main audience draw for the show.

So instead of an alcohol-fuelled dinner and awards ceremony featuring the world's biggest stars in all their glamour, viewers who did tune in to watch a sharply truncated Golden Globe news conference got to see a collection of B-list TV presenters read out the full list of winners in just over 30 minutes.

Queen Noor this week publicized a fund to promote enlightening" movies. PHOTO: EPA

Atonement won the award for Best Movie Drama. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street won the prize for Best Musical or Comedy, with Johnny Depp also winning the Best Actor award for his role. No Country for Old Men picked up a writing award for directors/writers Joel and Ethan Coen and Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem.

Attention now moves to the Oscar show scheduled for Feb. 24. The question making the rounds is whether the strike action that hobbled the Globes will also cripple the Oscars.

Organizers of the Academy Awards are hopeful they can reach an agreement with the union that would allow the Oscars show to proceed as usual. But so far, the Writers Guild of America is playing tough, refusing to back down from its official decision not to grant a waiver to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences that would allow the ceremony to go ahead as usual.

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese's documentary on the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, will have its world premiere as the opening movie at the annual Berlin Film Festival next month, organizers said.

The movie documents two concerts by the Stones at New York's Beacon Theater on Oct. 29, 2006 and Nov. 1, 2006. It also includes rare behind-the-scenes footage, as well as interviews, the Berlin festival organizers said.

"We are extremely excited to have the world premiere of this magnificent film as our opening gala," festival director Dieter Kosslick said. "Martin Scorsese has captured the pure essence of an iconic band on the big screen."

Afghanistan has banned the film The Kite Runner because a scene involving the sexual assault of a young boy plays on ethnic differences, the culture ministry said Wednesday.

The assault is "ethnically orientated" and this made it unacceptable to screen the film, which is mainly set in Afghanistan, deputy culture minister Najib Malalai said.

The ministry last year banned an Indian-made film, Kabul Express, on similar grounds. Ethnicity is a flashpoint in the country due to an ethnic-based civil war in the early 1990s.

The four child stars of the film, based on the bestselling book by Khaled Hosseini, left Afghanistan last month to settle in the US after concern about reprisals because of the scene.

Hollywood entertainment companies are backing a new multi-million US dollar fund aimed at combating stereotypes in films, Jordan's Queen Noor, a co-founder of the fund, announced earlier this week.

"For a lifetime, it seems, I have agonized over the way stereotypes, reinforced by popular culture and the media, can set the emotional and political stage for policies that result in chronic misunderstanding," she said.

"Yet the media has the power to humanize, as well as polarize," she told delegates on the first day of the Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Madrid.

To this end, she said, the US$100 million Alliance of Civilizations Media Fund would "support the production and distribution of films that entertain as well as enlighten."

She said such films "will enhance the connections that already exist between different societies, but are seldom noted on screen and in popular culture."

- agencies
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