Clint Eastwood’s competing against himself. So is Leonardo DiCaprio.

Toni Collette is up for two awards, for both film and TV. So are Chiwetel Ejiofor, Emily Blunt and Helen Mirren.

Borat, or the actor who played him, may be allowed to give an acceptance speech – probably censored for TV.

“Babel” plucked seven nominations; “The Departed” and “Dreamgirls” came up with five each.

Thus, did the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe nominations do their annual dirty work on Thursday, narrowing the field of potential Oscar contenders, inviting the odd unknown into the party, but mainly eliminating a lot of names from the list of “Oscar hopefuls” a month before Academy Award nominations come out.

The Globes are often a decent Oscar barometer – well, except for “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby.”

This year, Foreign Press ignored “United 93” and “World Trade Center,” but remembered Ben Affleck’s Venice Film Festival award-winning turn as the late TV Superman George Reeves in “Hollywoodland.”

“My enthusiasm for going this year is tempered only by the knowledge of how much George would have loved to be there,” Affleck said, noting the Globes’ reputation as “a great party.”

Eastwood is up for best director for both halves of his World War II Iwo Jima epic, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” -“projects that I hold very dear and I am thrilled that the members of the HFPA share my enthusiasm for these two movies,” he said. This year, he’s an underdog. Martin Scorsese (“The Departed”) is the favorite.

DiCaprio was tapped for both “The Departed” and “Blood Diamond.”

On the TV side, the Globes are less a harbinger of future TV honors (the Emmys come out in August) than a recognition of new talent. The foreign press association thus anointed “Heroes” and “Ugly Betty” and its star America Ferrera, nominations for longer-running series such as “Desperate Housewives,” “Entourage,” “Scrubs,” “The Sopranos” and “Grey’s Anatomy” and their stars.

The 64th Golden Globe Awards will be handed out at 7 p.m. CST Jan. 15 on Sunflower Broadband channels 8 and 14.