Borat and Queen Crown British Success at Globes

Bill Condon's Dreamgirls and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Babel look set to slug it out for this year's best picture Oscar after they won best comedy/musical and best dramatic picture respectively at last night's Golden Globes, a traditional Academy Awards bellwether. In the acting categories, that Dame Helen Mirren was a shoo-in to take best actress honours for her role in The Queen was a given, but she now looks likely to be joined in the best acting Oscars race by an unlikely consort: the spoof Kazakh reporter played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

The Globes, voted for by members of the obscure Hollywood Foreign Press Association, saw perennial Oscar loser Martin Scorsese win best director for The Departed, beating last year's Oscar champion Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood did, however, win the best foreign language film award for his Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood's film was one of two US films on the shortlist for the foreign language award. As the director noted, now he has made the foreign language category, he'll need to learn a foreign language.

British director Stephen Frears also lost out to Scorsese in the best director category, but the blow will have been dulled by The Queen's triumph in two other categories: best screenplay for Peter Morgan and best actress in a drama for Helen Mirren.

Morgan came closest to bringing politics into the congratulatory atmosphere at the Hilton: "What do we have to do to get our leaders to listen," he asked an audience who would probably answer that the easiest thing would be to get your people to call their people, or perhaps to send a donation. "What do we have to do to make them change tack?" His remarks were met with the sort of awkward silence that descends when you make the wrong comment at a dinner party, which was what he had just done.

Mirren was altogether more regal in accepting her two Globes of the evening, for her role as Elizabeth II in The Queen and as the earlier model in the TV drama Elizabeth I. "I honestly feel this award belongs to her," Mirren said of the eponymous star of The Queen, "because I think you fell in love with her, not with me. I just tried to make her as truthful to herself as possible. However, she already has an orb, that goes with her sceptre."

Accepting the first of her awards, for her TV role, Mirren read from her prepared speech: "Elizabeth I would have had an amazing speech at this point, wouldn't she? And then she would get very humble, and then she'd be teary, and then she'd be powerful. I have nothing to say but thank you very much."

Sacha Baron Cohen collected the Golden Globe for actor in a musical or comedy for his performance as Borat, beating such heavyweights as Johnny Depp, and confirming his unlikely status as an Oscar front-runner.

"This movie was a life-changing experience," Cohen said. "I saw some amazing, beautiful, invigorating parts of America, but I saw some dark parts of America, an ugly side of America, a side of America that rarely sees the light of day. I refer of course to the anus and testicles of my co-star, Ken Davitian."

The fat one sat at his table watching the skinny one and swigging from a bottle of wine. "Ken, when I was in that scene and I stared down and saw your two wrinkled golden globes on my chin, I thought to myself, 'I'd better win a bloody award for this'."

Cohen could well face Forest Whitaker in the best actor run-off at the Oscars. Whitaker won the best actor in a drama award for his performance as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, beating double-nominated Leonardo DiCaprio. The night's other double nominee was Helen Mirren, who did manage to beat herself, her incarnation in Prime Suspect losing to her Elizabeth I.

The show's big finale was the award to Babel, presented by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who broke his leg in a skiing accident at Christmas and limped on stage with the help of crutches. Babel had gone into the evening with the most nominations, seven in all, but had lost out in its first six categories. The film and its Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu will have been happy to wait for the end, however.

"The power of cinema is universal," Gonzalez Iñárritu said, the glitz of the occasion going to his head. "This is a very meaningful award, not only for us, but for the Mexican film industry."

He showed a cheeky side, too. "I swear I have my papers in order, governor, I swear," he said to Schwarzenegger, one immigrant to another.

Contrary to rumour, the city's latest celebrated immigrant, Victoria Beckham, was not at the ceremony.