Sideshow: 'Juno,' 'No Country' honored

Juno

and

No Country for Old Men

won top film honors and

The Wire

and

30 Rock

gained TV kudos Saturday at the Writers Guild of America Awards.

Diablo Cody won original screenplay for Juno, a tale of a wisecracking teen who gets pregnant and finds adoptive parents for her baby.

Brothers Ethan and Joel Coen received the adapted-screenplay award for No Country for Old Men, which features a relentless hit man played by Javier Bardem searching for Josh Brolin, who makes off with a fortune left behind at a drug deal gone awry. They are nominated for Oscars on Feb. 24.

Juno and No Country are nominated for best-picture Oscars.

The Wire won for TV dramatic series, while 30 Rock earned an award for best comedy series. Best new series was Mad Men; episodic drama, The Sopranos; episodic comedy, The Office; comedy/variety, The Colbert Report; and daytime serial, The Young & The Restless.

Guild members canceled their ceremony because of their walkout, which begin Nov. 5. Writers met over the weekend to consider a tentative agreement, and their leaders called yesterday for a membership vote on a three-year deal.

With the possibility of having writers back by Oscar night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts kept its Scientific and Technical Awards dinner Saturday night as unglamorous as ever.

Among those receiving awards were 20 computer geeks who worked on particle flow simulation technology, which makes water appear more realistic in movies.

"Fluid effects rock and all of us who work in fluids know this," honoree Nafees Bin Zafar said earnestly.

Legs crossed and fingers splayed,

LL Cool J

strikes the same pose seen in

John D. Rockefeller's

1917 portrait - although he wears a ball cap.

LL Cool J is among the hip-hop artists displayed in the National Portrait Gallery with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Ice T and Big Daddy Kane are portrayed with the same power and royalty as kings and presidents in "RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture." The show, open until October, is the first Smithsonian Institution exhibit to examine the influence of hip-hop on American art and culture.

A gourmet rat won 10 Annie Awards, which recognize achievements in feature film and television animation. The Annie Awards are presented by the International Animated Film Society.

Disney and Pixar's rodent tale Ratatouille won the award for best feature production, beating out DreamWorks' insect story Bee Movie, Sony Pictures' penguin-powered Surf's Up, Sony Pictures Classics' coming-of-age chronicle Persepolis, and 20th Century Fox's The Simpsons Movie.

Ratatouille went into Friday's ceremony at UCLA's Royce Hall with a leading 13 nominations. Among its awards were best writing and directing for Brad Bird, best voice acting for Ian Holm, best character animation, music, storyboarding, production design, and best animated video game.

Bird and two writing partners are also up for an Oscar for best original screenplay.

Ratatouille is the tale of a rat voiced by Patton Oswalt that tries to rise above the trash-nibbling ways of his family and friends.

The best-picture winner has gone on to win the Academy Award for animated feature every year but one since the Oscars added the category in 2001. Last year's Annie winner, the Disney-Pixar auto-racing comedy Cars, lost at the Oscars to the penguin musical Happy Feet.

Fool's Gold

, starring

Matthew McConaughey

and

Kate Hudson,

led the box office with a $22 million debut. It was followed by

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins,

Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert

,

The Eye

, and

Juno.