KEY POINTS:
LOS ANGELES - Babel, a searing film drama about cultural gaps among people around the world, earned seven Golden Globe nominations today to lead a surprising range of contenders for the widely watched movie honors.
"Babel" drew nods for best drama, best director for Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, supporting actor for Brad Pitt and best supporting actress for both Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi, among its nominees.
Director Martin Scorsese's crime thriller The Departed earned six nominations and was the second most nominated movie. Those two films were joined on the best drama list by British royals movie The Queen, adultery film Little Children and surprise choice Bobby, which looks at the day former US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated.
Highly touted musical Dreamgirls scored five nominations. It drew a nod for best movie musical or comedy alongside road movie Little Miss Sunshine, box office hits The Devil Wears Prada and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and another surprise, anti-tobacco satire Thank You for Smoking.
Babel producer Steve Golin called his movie "a good fit" for the roughly 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives out the Golden Globes.
"The film has a lot of different themes, certainly about communication and families and the world we live in. It's an emotional film," Golin said.
Key Oscar indicator
The annual Golden Globe awards often indicate which movies will compete for the Academy Awards, the film industry's top honors.
Tom O'Neil, columnist for Oscar website TheEnvelope.com, called the best drama nomination of "Bobby" a "jawdropper," and said the film "is back in the Oscar race."
That movie, which is backed by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein's The Weinstein Co., had received only mixed reviews and was considered out of the Oscar race by many pundits.
Likewise, Thank You For Smoking also lacked recognition in many recent critics' awards, and although Borat has been a box office hit, its nomination was also a surprise.
The faux documentary also earned a best comic actor nomination for its star, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who portrays the politically incorrect Kazakhstan TV reporter, Borat, in the movie.
"It was the furthest thing from my mind," "Borat" director Larry Charles said of the nomination. Charles added that he believed Cohen was "a comic visionary."
Actors, actresses
Along with Cohen, Johnny Depp was nominated for best actor in a musical or comedy for smash hit, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the No. 1 film at the box office this year. Joining those two actors were Aaron Eckhart in Thank You For Smoking, Chiwetel Ejiofor in Kinky Boots and Will Ferrell for Stranger Than Fiction.
Nominees for best actor in a film drama were topped by Leonardo DiCaprio for two movies, Blood Diamond and The Departed. He is joined by Peter O'Toole for Venus, Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness and Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland.
The nominees for best actress in a drama were Penelope Cruz for Spanish film Volver, Maggie Gyllenhaal for Sherrybaby, and Britain's Kate Winslet in Little Children, Helen Mirren for The Queen and Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal.
Lead actress nominees in a musical or comedy included singer Beyonce Knowles in Dreamgirls, Toni Collette in Little Miss Sunshine, Renee Zellweger in Miss Potter and veterans Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada and Annette Bening for Running with Scissors.
Two US films were nominated in the best foreign language film category led by controversial director Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which is told in an ancient Mayan language, and Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima, which is presented in Japanese.
The other three films in the foreign language group are Mexican fantasy Pan's Labyrinth, director Pedro Almodovar's Volver" and Germany's The Lives of Others.
Golden Globe winners will be named in a ceremony in Beverly Hills on January 15. The Oscars are given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and those winners will be named on February 25.
- REUTERS
