The thriller Babel and the musical Dreamgirls won top honors in Hollywood's Golden Globe awards, Monday. Mike O'Sullivan has more on the annual awards from Los Angeles.

California governor and superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the Golden Globe for best dramatic picture:

"And the Golden Globe goes to - 'Babel,'" he said.

An ensemble film, Babel begins with a tragic shooting in the Moroccan desert, then follows the intertwining stories of six families around the world. Mexican director-producer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu accepted the award for everyone involved in the production.

"We are receiving this on behalf of more than 1,200 people that worked on this film and made it possible," he said. "We worked and it took us more than one year doing this film - shooting it in three continents and in five languages."

Dreamgirls, a story about the Motown music scene of the 1960's and '70s, earned the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy.

Dreamgirls also earned Golden Globes for supporting performers Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson.

Helen Mirren was named best actress in a drama for her starring role in The Queen. She thanked the woman she played the film, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

"… because I think you fell in love with her, not with me, and I just tried to make her as truthful to herself as possible," Mirren said, during her acceptance speech.

Mirren earned a second Golden Globe for her role as an earlier British monarch in the television miniseries Elizabeth I.

A film set in 1970's Uganda earned Forest Whitacker the award of best actor in a drama. Whitacker played the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.

Martin Scorsese was named best director for The Departed, a tale of intrigue and mob violence, starring Leonardo diCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon.

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was named best actor in musical or comedy for his mock documentary Borat.

Merryl Streep earned the Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy for her starring role in the fashion industry satire, The Devil Wears Prada.

The award for best foreign language film went to the American, production Letters from Iwo Jima from Director Clint Eastwood. The war film was shot in Japanese, with English subtitles.

The Golden Globes are awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They sometimes point to winners at the more prestigious Oscars, which will be presented next month.