Slumdog...bags four Golden Globes

Mumbai-based drama Slumdog Millionaire has won four Golden Globes including Best Original Score in a Motion Picture for A.R. Rahman.

Slumdog Millionaire also won Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director Award for Danny Boyle and Best Screenplay for Simon Beaufoy.

The success of Slumdog ..., which has received numerous critical awards, was all the more potent since it had originally struggled to find a distributor in the US. "We really weren't expecting to be here in America at all at one time, so it's just amazing to be here," said screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.

There is reason to smile for India as a large part of the cast is either Indian or of Indian origin. Dev Patel and Freida Pinto, the leading pair of the film are both actors of Indian origin. Bollywood made its presence felt in the film with Anil Kapoor playing a supporting role and A R Rahman giving the award winning music score.

Australian actor Heath Ledger earned a posthumous award as Best Supporting Actor (Drama) for The Joker in The Dark Knight. Ledger's prize for his role came almost a year after he died from an accidental drug overdose in New York last January.

The award for Ledger had been widely expected and cements his status as the hot favourite to win the equivalent prize at the Oscars on Feb 22. If Ledger wins an Oscar, he would become only the second ever person to win a posthumous one.

"All of us who worked with Heath on The Dark Knight accept the award with an awful mixture of sadness and incredible pride," said the film's director Chris Nolan. "After Heath passed away, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema."

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona starring Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem received the Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) award.

The acclaimed animated romance WALL-E was named Best Animated Film, while little-known Sally Hawkins won the prize for Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) for her role as a perky teacher in Happy-Go-Lucky.

Among the other big winners were Kate Winslet, who won a Best Supporting Actress (Drama) prize for her role as a former Nazi in The Reader. Winslet became one of the few actresses who can claim winning two acting awards in one night as she also bagged the Best Actress (Drama) for Revolutionary Road.

Mickey Rourke won Best Actor(Drama) for The Wrestler while Bruce Springsteen won the award for Best Movie Song for the same film.

A drama about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon Waltz With Bashir, was named Best Foreign Film.

From Lifetime Achievement Award winner Steven Spielberg to Jennifer Lopez who opened the show in a shimmering golden dress, the Beverley Hills Hilton was filled with a roster of the biggest names in the movie and television world.

The leading nominations were Brad Pitt's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, about a man born old who grows young and Frost/Nixon, about a series of revealing television interviews of the notorious US president, both of which were nominated for Best Drama. Doubt, starring Meryl Streep in a searing tale about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, was also a favourite nominee.

Other Best Drama nominees were The Reader, a World War-II based drama about a romance between a young law student and a female SS guard, and Revolutionary Road starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a drama about the challenges facing 1950's suburbanites.

The nominees for Best Musical or Comedy were the Abba-based musical Mamma Mia!, Burn After Reading, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

The Best Foreign Language nominees were Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany), Everlasting Moments (Sweden), Gomorrah (Italy), I've Loved You So Long (France), and Waltz With Bashir (Israel).

Presenters included the Jonas Brothers,Shah Rukh Khan, Hayden Panettiere, Martin Scorsese, Drew Barrymore, Sacha Baron Cohen, Salma Hayek, Jessica Lange, Amy Poehler and Seth Rogen, as well as Ricky Gervais, Johnny Depp, David Duchovny, Megan Fox, Eva Longoria, Sting, Sean Combs and Mark Wahlberg. Shah Rukh Khan became the first Indian actor to be a Golden Globe presenter.

The Golden Globes, sometimes called Hollywood's biggest party, marked a stark contrast to last year's drab affair when a picket threat from the striking screenwriters union reduced the usually lavish affair to a functional press announcement.