Film drama Up in the Air secured six Golden Globe nominations today as Irish actor Brendan Gleeson received a nomination for best actor in a TV mini-series.
Gleeson's nod came for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the biopic of the wartime leader Into The Storm. He won an Emmy earlier this year for the role.
Gleeson was named on a list of contenders for best actor in a TV mini-series, alongside Belfast-born Kenneth Branagh and Jeremy Irons.
Other Irish nominees in the prestigious awards include U2 for best song category for Winter from the new Jim Sheridan film Brothers and Wicklow freeman Daniel Day-Lewis for best actor - comedy or musical for Nine.
Elsewhere, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep surprised Hollywood watchers with two nominations each for the major awards show.
Up in the Air, starring George Clooney as a corporate hatchet man forced to consider his own direction at mid-life, earned nominations for Clooney as best actor, Jason Reitman for best director and screenplay with co-writer Sheldon Turner, and for both Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga as supporting actress.
Close behind was Nine, about the life and loves of an Italian film director, with five nominations, including best musical or comedy. Its stars, Daniel Day-Lewis and Marion Cotillard, received nods for actor and actress in a musical or comedy, respectively. Penelope Cruz landed in the supporting actress group, and Nine received one nod for best song.
But Bullock and Streep had industry watchers buzzing at the widely-watched awards shows. Bullock scored nominations for best dramatic actress for football film The Blind Side and actress in a musical or comedy with relationship movie The Proposal. Streep will compete against herself in the category for best actress in a musical or comedy with two movies, Julie & Julia and It's Complicated.
Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which gives out the Golden Globes, said the nominees epitomise "a fantastic year" for movies both at the box office and in terms of quality.
The Golden Globes will be given out on January 17th. The annual awards are seen as a key indicator of which movies will compete for the world's top film honours, the Oscars, in March.
Science-fiction adventure Avatar earned four nominations, including best drama, best director for James Cameron and original song and movie score. Quentin Tarantino's World War Two fantasy, Inglourious Basterds also earned four nods: drama, director, screenplay for Tarantino and supporting actor for Christoph Waltz.
Rounding out the best film drama nominees were Iraq war movie The Hurt Locker and urban drama Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, which each earned three nominations.
Joining Nine in the race for best movie musical or comedy were culinary movie Julie & Julia, box office sensation The Hangover and indie hit (500) Days of Summer, which claimed a best actor in a comedy nod for its star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Joining Clooney among nominees for best dramatic actor were Jeff Bridges playing a down-and-out country singer in Crazy Heart, Colin Firth as a man considering suicide in A Single Man, Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela in Invictus and Tobey Maguire for Brothers.
In the group for best actor in a comedy or musical, Gordon-Levitt and Day-Lewis will face competition from Matt Damon in The Informant!, Robert Downey Jr for Sherlock Holmes, and Michael Stuhlberg for A Serious Man.
Along with Bullock and Sidibe, best dramatic actress nods went to Helen Mirren for The Last Station, Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria and Carey Mulligan with An Education.
Rounding out the list of nominees for best actress in a musical or comedy was Julia Roberts in Duplicity.
Finally, foreign language film nominees were Italian movie Baaria, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces, Chilean movie The Maid, French movie A Prophet and German movie The White Ribbon.
Reuters