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LOS ANGELES - Powerful drama Babel and Martin Scorsese's bloody crime thriller The Departed are tipped to dominate the 64th Golden Globes in Los Angeles tomorrow as the race for next month's Oscars heats up.
Babel and The Departed share 13 nominations between them heading into the star-studded
extravaganza in Beverly Hills, which has increasingly come to be seen as a gauge of likely Oscars winners.
In the major categories, The Departed, which has six nominations against Babel's seven, could deliver Scorsese his second Golden Globes best director prize in four years following his 2003 win for Gangs of New York.
Scorsese, who has never won an Oscar despite being nominated five times, is seen as a shoo-in for the major directing prizes of the 2007 awards season, which culminates with the Academy Awards in Hollywood on February 25.
In the past three years, the winner of the best director prize at the Golden Globes has gone on to win the equivalent Oscar.
But pundits are uncertain whether The Departed - which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson in a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs - will emulate the anticipated success of its director.
"It's Scorsese's year - the question is, does his film go with him?," said Tom O'Neil, a columnist with the Los Angeles Times' the envelope.com.
"The race for best drama really is wide open."
According to Lew Harris, editorial director at Movies.com, Babel, Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's moving ensemble piece shot in four languages on three continents, has rallied strongly.
"The interesting thing to me is the strength of Babel," Harris said. "I don't know if it's going to win because there's so much spin about Scorsese and The Departed, but Babel has done very, very well. That's a big surprise."
In the best director category, Scorsese faces competition from Inarritu, Britain's Stephen Frears (The Queen) and perennial favourite Clint Eastwood.
Eastwood has been double-nominated for his back-to-back World War 2 dramas Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, which tell the story of the battle for Iwo Jima from the perspective of US and Japanese soldiers.
Neither of Eastwood's movies are in the running for best motion picture in the drama category, however, which sees The Departed and Babel up against Bobby, Little Children and The Queen.
The Queen, a behind-the-scenes, fictionalised dramatisation of the Queen's reaction to the 1997 death of Princess Diana, is expected to earn Helen Mirren a Golden Globe for best performance by an actress in a drama.
Mirren is one of three British actresses nominated, along with Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) and Kate Winslet (Little Children). Spain's Penelope Cruz (Volver) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (Sherrybaby) round out the nominees.
In the best actor category, heart-throb DiCaprio has earned two nods for The Departed and Blood Diamond.
But DiCaprio faces stiff competition from Forest Whitaker, superb as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, and 74-year-old Irish legend Peter O'Toole, an ageing actor who falls for a young woman in Venus. Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happiness) completes the nominees.
While both Babel and The Departed are expected to fare well in the major categories, movie pundits are tipping independent feel-good movie Little Miss Sunshine and mockumentary Borat as possible surprise packages elsewhere.
According to O'Neil, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan could score an upset over Dreamgirls in the best comedy or musical category.
- AFP