GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED

{BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.} - The cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain led Golden Globe contenders today with seven nominations, among them best dramatic picture and honors for actors (and real-life-lovers) Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams and director Ang Lee positioning itself as a key Academy Awards competitor.

Other best drama picture contenders were the murder thriller The Constant Gardener, the Edward R. Murrow tale Good Night, and Good Luck, the mobster story A History of Violence, and the infidelity drama Match Point.

The Globes were a triumph for smaller budgeted films over big studio productions. "This is the first time in the history of the Golden Globes that all of the best (dramatic) film nominees are independent movies made for under $30 million," said Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

The Globes have a separate category for musical or comedy films. Nominated there were the theater tale Mrs. Henderson Presents, the Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, the Broadway musical The Producers, the divorce story The Squid and the Whale, and the Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk the Line.

The Globes were the latest recognition for Brokeback Mountain, a critical darling that has received top honors from critics groups in New York City, Los Angeles and Boston.
Along with Ledger, who plays a family man concealing a homosexual affair from his family, best dramatic actor nominees included three actors playing real-life figures: Russell Crowe as depression-era boxer Jim Braddock in Cinderella Man, Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in Capote, and David Strathairn as newsman Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. The fifth nominee was Terrence Howard as a small-time pimp-turned-rap singer in Hustle & Flow.

Good Night, And Good Luck was tied for second-most film nominations with four, along with Match Point and The Producers. The Murrow tale earned a best-director nomination for George Clooney, who also had a supporting actor movie nomination for the oil industry thriller Syriana.

Felicity Huffman received two nominations, best dramatic actress in a film for her role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in Transamerica and best actress in a TV musical or comedy for Desperate Housewives. Her Housewives co-stars Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher and (yes - even) Eva Longoria also were nominated.

Other best dramatic film actress nominees were Maria Bello as a wife learning painful secrets about her husband in A History of Violence, Gwyneth Paltrow as an unstable math genius' daughter in Proof, Charlize Theron as a woman leading a sexual harassment lawsuit in North Country and Ziyi Zhang as a poor girl who becomes the belle of Japan's geisha houses in Memoirs of a Geisha.

The Globes are handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a relatively small group of about 90 reporters for overseas news outlets. Yet with a nationally televised awards ceremony on NBC and a historically solid knack for picking eventual Academy Award winners, the Globes wield a fair amount of sway among the 5,800 Oscar voters.

Winners of the Golden Globes will be announced Jan. 16, five days before polls close for Oscar voters. Oscar nominations come out Jan. 31, and the awards will be presented March 5.
The Globes feature 13 categories for film and 11 for television. Unlike other major movie awards, the Globes have separate divisions for dramas and comedies or musicals in the best-picture and lead-acting categories. For a complete list of nominees go the Hollywood Foreign Press Association website: http://www.hfpa.org

Anthony Hopkins will receive the group's Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.