BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – “Babel” won best drama and “Dreamgirls” was named best musical or comedy at Monday’s Golden Globes, establishing them as potential front-runners for a showdown at the Academy Awards.
“I swear I have my papers in order, governor, I swear,” “Babel” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu of Mexico joked after Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger presented the best drama prize.
The Globes for best dramatic performances were awarded for renditions of two wildly different heads of state: Helen Mirren won best actress as Britain’s priggish monarch Elizabeth II in “The Queen,” while Forest Whitaker took best actor as magnetic but savage Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.”
Mirren also won the Globe for best actress in a TV movie or miniseries as the current monarch’s namesake of centuries ago in “Elizabeth I.”
The crowd-pleasing musical “Dreamgirls” also won acting honors for Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson.
“Wow. I’ll be damned,” said Murphy, previously a three-time loser in the best-actor category at the Globes.
Hudson rose to fame barely two years ago on “American Idol” on the strength of her powerhouse voice, which she uses to great effect in “Dreamgirls,” a film that also shows her remarkable acting range.
“I had always dreamed but I never ever dreamed this big. This goes far beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” said Hudson, who dedicated her award to the late Florence Ballard, one of the singers from the Supremes on whom her “Dreamgirls” character was based.
The best director prize went to Martin Scorsese for the mob tale “The Departed.”
American director Clint Eastwood’s Japanese-language World War II saga “Letters From Iwo Jima” won the honor for foreign-language film, a prize usually reserved for movies from outside the United States.
The talking-auto comedy “Cars” took the first-ever Golden Globe for animated film, a category added because of the rush of cartoon flicks Hollywood now churns out.
“The Queen” won the movie screenplay honor for Peter Morgan.
Warren Beatty received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.
Golden Globe winners
Movies
Television
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