Atonement scoops top Golden Globe

Atonement has been named Best Drama at the Golden Globe awards which were announced minus the usual pomp-and-ceremony as a result of the Hollywood writers strike.

Despite the lack of the accustomary red-carpet glitz, the Brits came out smiling with a string of top awards.

Atonement, a period drama that traces the dire consequences that follow a jealous teen's false accusation against her sister's new lover, also won for best score.

The film had led contenders with seven nominees, but British stars - Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, both missed out in the best dramatic acting categories.

However another British star Daniel-Day Lewis was named best dramatic actor for the historical epic There Will Be Blood, in which he plays a baron of California's oil boom in the early 20th century whose commercial interests put him at odds with a young preacher.

And film legend Julie Christie won best dramatic actress for the gloomy drama Away From Her, playing a woman succumbing to Alzheimer's who forms a new attachment to a fellow patient that causes heartache for her steadfast husband.

Meanwhile, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street won in the Best Musical or Comedy category with Johnny Depp winning Best Actor for the title role in the film as a vengeful barber who slits the throats of his customers.

Also winning two awards was the crime saga No Country for Old Men.

It earned the screenplay Globe for writer-directors Ethan and Joel Coen and the supporting actor honour for Spain's Javier Bardem as a merciless killer tracking a fortune in crime cash poached by an innocent bystander who stumbles onto a drug deal gone bad.

Australian Cate Blanchett won the first award of the night, taking the supporting actress Globe for the Bob Dylan tale I'm Not There.

Actors and filmmakers skipped the Golden Globes because of the two month strike by the Writers Guild of America, which had planned pickets outside the show if organisers had tried to do their usual televised ceremony.

Globe planners and NBC cancelled the three hour star-studded bash in favour of an hour-long show at which the winners were announced and clips of the film and TV nominees were shown.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

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