While the categories are broad, some good choices are left out.

While the categories are broad, some good choices are left out.
By CARLA MEYER
Sacramento Bee
The Golden Globes always seem like the most fun of the legitimate movie-awards shows. Nominees get to sit at tables and eat, and better yet, drink cocktails. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which puts on the Globes every year, even lets the television people in. They just have to sit in back.
Airing at 8 p.m. Monday on NBC, the Globes are also loose-limbed in nominating actors and films. A youth-soccer "everybody plays" rule seems to apply, with categories broadened to include musicals and comedies as well as dramas, in effect doubling the number of nominees for best picture, actor and actress.
Below is a list of Golden Globe movie nominees. I have picked a winner in each category, based on 2005 critics' awards, the HFPA's voting history, personal preference and pure guesswork.
BEST DRAMA
Taut with thrillers, this category includes director Fernando Meirelles' adaptation of John le Carre's "The Constant Gardener"; David Cronenberg's graphic-novel-derived "A History of Violence" and Woody Allen's tale of an incendiary romantic triangle, "Match Point." Rounding out the field are George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck," about 1950s TV-newsman Edward R. Murrow's on-air fight with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," a story of a longtime secret affair between two men who meet as sheepherders in 1963 Wyoming.
Winner: "Brokeback Mountain." It garnered the most Globe nods with seven and is a lock for a best-picture nod when Academy Award nominations are announced Jan. 31.
Missing: "Munich, "Crash" and "Capote."
BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA
The HFPA dug deep for this list in a wan year for actresses, honoring Gwyneth Paltrow's moving turn as the tormented daughter of a math genius in "Proof," which came out to scant box office and critical shrugs in September. Charlize Theron was great as a sexually harassed iron miner in October's "North Country," but that film also came and went.
"History of Violence" also was released in early fall, stuck around longer, giving Maria Bello more exposure than Theron and Paltrow for her fierce performance as a wife and mother under siege. Felicity Huffman's fearless portrayal of a man becoming a woman in "Transamerica" and Ziyi Zhang's performance in "Memoirs of a Geisha" are even fresher in the minds of HFPA voters, since these films were released in December.
Winner: Huffman. Gender-bending and/or deglamorized performances always fare well, and the HFPA already likes Huffman in "Desperate Housewives," nominating her this year as well as last in the musical/comedy TV category.
Missing: Naomi Watts, "King Kong."
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA
Most years, this category holds several fine performances and maybe one or two great ones. This year, it's bursting with amazing performances. Russell Crowe is so phenomenal in "Cinderella Man" that he overcame not just the phone-throwing incident but poor box office and a summer release to score a nod. David Strathairn serves as a calm face of justice in "Good Night," and Terrence Howard announces himself as a star with his charismatic work as a pimp-turned-rapper in "Hustle & amp; Flow."
But this is really a two-person race between Philip Seymour Hoffman of "Capote" and Heath Ledger of "Brokeback Mountain": Ledger and Hoffman are neck and neck in critics' awards for their immersive work as, respectively, a taciturn, love-struck ranch hand and a brilliant, troubled real-life author.
Winner: Ledger, but that's mostly love talkin'. Hoffman's performance, though extraordinary, doesn't tug at the heartstrings like Ledger's does.
Missing: Ralph Fiennes, "Constant Gardener."
BEST MUSICAL OR COMEDY
Count out "The Producers" immediately. Although it's the only bona-fide musical here, it's not very good. "The Squid and the Whale," about the rupture of an intellectual couple's marriage and its effect on their kids, is funny-uncomfortable, not funny ha-ha, and too small a film for a win, as is "Mrs. Henderson Presents," about a rich 1930s British widow (Judi Dench) who stages a semi-nude musical review. That leaves the gorgeous, bright-spirited "Pride & amp; Prejudice" vs. the beautifully acted, entertaining and overlong Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line."
Winner: "Walk the Line," because its lead performances (by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon) are so memorable.
Missing: "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." Funny, sweet and honest, it was the best comedy of 2005.
BEST ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL OR COMEDY
Reese Witherspoon's multilayered, charismatic turn as June Carter is such an Oscar favorite already that the Globes are academic. Keira Knightley, nominated for her delightful portrayal of Lizzy Bennet in "Pride," and Judi Dench, recognized for playing a haughty woman with a naughty vocation in "Mrs. Henderson," can use the Globes to practice losing gracefully to Witherspoon at the Oscars. Sarah Jessica Parker can view her nod for "The Family Stone" as an affirmation of her post-"Sex and the City" career. And Laura Linney, nominated for her work as a mousy libertine in "The Squid and the Whale," can just go on being good in everything.
Winner: Witherspoon.
Missing: Nobody. The category's already slightly padded.
BEST ACTOR IN A MUSICAL OR COMEDY
Talk about everybody getting to play: This six-nominee category is so loose that Johnny Depp got a nod for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," perhaps just to see him show up in a nutty outfit and scuffed boots. Nathan Lane, overcooked in "The Producers," seems to have been recognized simply because he's in a real musical. Pierce Brosnan gets a good-sport nod for spoofing his Bond image as an inelegant hit man in "The Matador."
The true contenders: Jeff Daniels, infuriating and ingratiating as a self-involved writer in "Squid and the Whale"; Cillian Murphy, pure joy as a cross-dresser in search of Mummy in "Breakfast on Pluto," and Joaquin Phoenix, mesmerizing as Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line."
Winner: Phoenix. He's the only likely Oscar contender in the bunch.
Missing: Steve Carell from "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
BEST SCREENPLAY
Allen brings more zip than he's shown in a while to "Match Point." Clooney and Grant Heslov ably re-create the early-1950s political climate in "Good Night, and Good Luck." Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana beautifully enhance Annie Proulx's short story for "Brokeback Mountain," and Paul Haggis and co-writer Bobby Moresco, in their "Crash" script, articulate ideas about race that most people don't want to think about. Playwright Tony Kushner, co-writing with Eric Roth, brings a literary quality to the dialogue of "Munich."
Winner: McMurtry and Ossana, for "Brokeback Mountain." When the screenplay category is split into original and adapted at the Oscars, Clooney and Heslov might win as well.
Missing: Dan Futterman, "Capote."
BEST DIRECTOR
Allen's comeback is a nice story, but he's a long shot in this talent-packed, six-nominee category. Peter Jackson once again shows his command of a big project with "King Kong," but some see the film as popcorn fare. Meirelles and Cronenberg brought great immediacy to "Constant Gardener" and "History of Violence," respectively, but nobody matches the visual elan of Spielberg and "Munich." But it's "Good Night"'s Clooney, renaissance man of 2005, who poses the biggest threat to the early awards favorite, "Brokeback" director Lee.
Winner: Lee.
Missing: Haggis, for "Crash," and Bennett Miller, for "Capote."