Golden Globes under way with big wins for 'Oppenheimer'

LOS ANGELES, United States — "Oppenheimer" picked up multiple key wins at the Golden Globes on Sunday, on a night billed as a celebration of Christopher Nolan's epic and its fellow summer smash hit "Barbie."

Dubbed "Barbenheimer" after they were released on the same weekend and grossed a combined $2.4 billion, the two movies boasted 17 nominations between them at the Globes, which kicked off Hollywood's awards season.

"Oppenheimer" -- which tells the story of the inventor of the atomic bomb, and has eight nods -- took best director for Nolan, as well as acting wins for Cillian Murphy (lead male actor in a drama) and Robert Downey Jr (supporting male actor).

Downey Jr, who plays a powerful politician and bitter adversary opposite Murphy's brilliant scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, praised the movie as a "masterpiece."

"A sweeping story about the ethical dilemma of nuclear weapons grosses one billion dollars -- does that track? No. Unless and because [the film's studio] Universal went all in on Christopher Nolan to direct," he said.

Nolan won best director, fending off Greta Gerwig, who directed "Barbie," the leading film heading into the night with nine nominations.

"Barbie," which turned nostalgia for the beloved doll into a sharp satire about misogyny and female empowerment, is tipped to win best comedy film, and won the award for best song, for a tune written by Billie Eilish.

As the year's highest grossing movie, it claimed a newly created trophy for box office achievement.

But it surprisingly lost out on best screenplay to French courtroom drama "Anatomy of a Fall."

That film's director and co-writer Justine Triet said she had assumed that "nobody is going to see this movie" about "a couple fighting, suicide, a dog vomiting... I mean, come on!"

"This movie is about the truth, the impossibility of catching it," she added, as it also won best non-English language film.

Among the other winners were Emma Stone as best comedy actress for her no-holds-barred turn in surreal, sexy bildungsroman "Poor Things," and Da'Vine Joy Randolph for her supporting role in prep school comedy "The Holdovers."

Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" won best animated film.

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