The strike situation is looking better and better, the WGA and the producers actually seem to be communicating, and over at Academy Awards headquarters, the mood is optimistic too. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that at a luncheon for this year’s Oscar nominees, Academy president Sid Ganis announced jubilantly, "There's no doubt about it. We're going to do it.”

What this will mean is the strike doesn’t end before then, nobody knows. Presumably the stars still won’t show, and there won’t be any writers to pen the ceremony. But with everyone so optimistic that a conclusion is near, it seems that no one will really have the patience to bend to the writer’s wills yet again when Oscar time rolls around. As Best Actor nominee George Clooney, who just returned from a trip to Darfur, pointed out at the luncheon, "I've been in a place where people are killing each other, that has warlords all around. I don't want to hear about people who can't all get in a room and get along."

For the last few weeks the Academy has been planning two Oscar shows, one of them business as usual and the other consisting mostly of clips, and featuring no stars or pretty much anyone else to accept the awards. While the second option may still need to be deployed, for now everyone seems to be pretending that won’t happen. We’re guaranteed, though, that the show won’t become the same disasterbacle that the Golden Globes became. Take heart, America: no matter what happens, we will no longer continue to be assaulted by Billy Bush.