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The night of the oscars

VIOLENT THRILLER 'No Country for Old Men' won the best picture Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards here on Sunday as European stars scored a clean sweep in the acting honours in an historic Hollywood night.

'No Country for Old Men' emerged as the biggest winner of the evening, scooping four Oscars including best director for brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Javier Bardem. The film, a bleak and bloody drama about a drug deal that goes wrong and its murderous aftermath, was the overwhelming pre-Oscars favourite. "Ethan and I have been making stories with movie cameras since we were kids... what we do now doesn't feel that much different than what we were doing," Joel Coen said after collecting the best director award. "We're very thankful to all of you out there for letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox."

The Coens

Five facts about filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, who won a joint Oscar for their work directing 'No Country For Old Men.'

* The Coens - Joel, 53, and Ethan, 50 - were born and raised in Minnesota, where both their parents were college professors.

* While the brothers worked as a team behind the camera on all their movies, Joel Coen alone was credited as director for their work until the 2004 release of 'The Ladykillers,' for which they were granted a Directors Guild of America waiver crediting them both as co-directors from then on.

* The Coens jointly edit their own films under the pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes.

* 'No Country For Old Men' marks their 12th feature film written and directed together, and their first based entirely on someone else's novel, Cormac McCarthy's book of the same name.

* Joel Coen and his wife, actress Frances McDorm=and, met while working on the brothers' 1984 debut feature, 'Blood Simple.'

European talent

The evening's acting awards were dominated by European talent, with France's Marion Cotillard winning best actress for 'La Vie En Rose' and Ireland's Daniel Day-Lewis winning best actor for 'There Will be Blood.' Cotillard, 32, won for her astounding performance as tragic chanteuse Edith Piaf, becoming the first Frenchwoman to win the best actress Oscar since Simone Signoret in 1960. It was the only second time in Oscars history that the best actress award had gone to a performance in a non-English speaking role. Italian legend Sophia Loren was the other woman to achieve the feat in 1962. Cotillard, who received the award from 2007 best actor Forest Whitaker, paid tribute to her director before exclaiming: "Thank you life, thank you love. It is true that there are some angels in this city. Thank you so, so much."

The British-born Day-Lewis received his award from British actress Helen Mirren, last year's winner for her role in 'The Queen' quipping: "That's the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood."

The supporting actor and actress awards went to Spain's Javier Bardem for his performance as a psychopathic hitman in 'No Country for Old Men' and Britain's Tilda Swinton, who played a scheming corporate legal chief in 'Michael Clayton.' Bardem's award made him the first performer from Spain ever to win an acting Oscar. "This is pretty amazing, it's a great honour for me to have this,ª Bardem told guests in his acceptance speech."

"Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough to think that I could do that and put one of the most horrible haircuts in history on my head," he added, referring to the bizarre coiffure given to his character in the film.

Swinton meanwhile paid tribute to her agent after receiving her statuette with one of the night's best acceptance speeches. "Oh, no. Happy birthday, man," Swinton said, clutching her Oscar statuette. "I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this. Really truly the same shape head and, it has to be said, the buttocks."

In other highlights, Austria's 'The Counterfeiters' won the best foreign film award for its true story of a group of Jewish prisoners recruited by the Nazis to mount one of the largest counterfeiting operations in history.

Action movies

Overall, the awards went largely to the form book, with the grim 'No Country for Old Men' making a killing to claim the top awards. However Paul Thomas Anderson's 'There Will Be Blood', which had been nominated in eight categories, finished with only two awards, for cinematography and Day-Lewis. The second best performing film in terms of Oscars was action movie 'The Bourne Ultimatum', which snaffled three prizes in the technical categories.

Oscar host Jon Stewart had opened the show with a joke about the crop of 'Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies' in his monologue. "Does this town need a hug? What happened? 'No Country For Old Men?' 'Sweeney Todd?' 'There Will Be Blood?' All I can say is, thank God for teen pregnancy. I think the country agrees," Stewart said in a nod to best picture nominee 'Juno', which won a best original screenplay Oscar.

Grim realities

The Hollywood A-list meanwhile was reminded of the grim realities of the world beyond the red carpet as the best documentary Oscar went to Alex Gibney's harrowing 'Taxi to the Dark Side.' The film spotlights interrogation techniques at US military facilities, investigating the death in custody of a young Afghan taxi driver, called Dilawar, at a prison in Afghanistan in 2002. "This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father a Navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury at what was being done to the rule of law," Gibney said as he collected his Oscar. "Let's hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and go back to the light," Gibney said.

This year's Oscars are taking place after months of uncertainty following the Hollywood screenwriters strike that wreaked havoc with the entertainment industry's awards season. The Golden Globes were cancelled after stars vowed to boycott the event in support of striking writers and fears of a similar no-show had plagued the Oscars until the strike was called off earlier this month.

'No country for old men'

More about 'No Country For Old Men,' the gory chase film that won the Oscar for best picture.

* Directed by brothers Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, the movie won four Academy Awards, also including best directing, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor (Javier Bardem).

* 'No Country' won two top prizes at the Screen Actors Guild Awards - for best ensemble cast and for Spanish performer Bardem as best supporting actor for his role as a cold-blooded killer.

* The Directors Guild of America chose the Coens as best feature film directors.

* The Coen brothers were given the best adapted screenplay award from the Writers Guild of America for their adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.

* 'No Country' is the 12th movie co-written and directed by the Coen brothers and their most commercially successful, grossing just over $64 million at the domestic box office and $30 million more overseas.

THE BIG WINNERS

Following is a complete list of winners at the 80th annual Academy Awards, held in Hollywood on Sunday.

BEST PICTURE

'No Country For Old Men' (Miramax and Paramount Vantage) A Scott Rudin/Mike Zoss Production: Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, producers

DIRECTOR

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for 'No Country For Old Men' (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)

LEAD ACTOR

Daniel Day-Lewis in 'There Will Be Blood' (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)

LEAD ACTRESS

Marion Cotillard in 'La Vie en Rose' (Picturehouse)

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Javier Bardem in 'No Country For Old Men' (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Tilda Swinton in 'Michael Clayton' (Warner Bros)

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

'The Counterfeiters' - Austria (Sony Pictures Classics)

ANIMATED FEATURE

Brad Bird for 'Ratatouille' (Walt Disney Pictures)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Alex Gibney and Eva Orner for 'Taxi to the Dark Side' (THINKFilm) An X-Ray Production

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Diablo Cody for 'Juno' (Fox Searchlight)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for 'No Country For Old Men' (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Robert Elswit for 'There Will Be Blood' (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)

ORIGINAL SCORE

Dario Marianelli for 'Atonement' (Focus Features)

ORIGINAL SONG

'Falling Slowly' from 'Once' (Fox Searchlight), music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman for 'Peter & the Wolf' (BreakThru Films) A BreakThru Films/Se-ma-for Studios Production

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth for 'Freeheld' A Lieutenant Films Production

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

Philippe Pollet-Villard for 'Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)' (Premium Films) A Kare Production

VISUAL EFFECTS

Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood for 'The Golden Compass' (New Line in association with Ingenious Film Partners)

ART DIRECTION

Dante Ferretti for art direction and Francesca Lo Schiavo for set direction on 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' (DreamWorks and Warner Bros, Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount)

COSTUME DESIGN

Alexandra Byrne for 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' (Universal Pictures)

MAKEUP

Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald for 'La Vie en Rose' (Picturehouse)

FILM EDITING

Christopher Rouse for 'The Bourne Ultimatum' (Universal)

SOUND EDITING

Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg for 'The Bourne Ultimatum' (Universal)

SOUND MIXING

Scott Millan, David Parker and Kirk Francis for 'The Bourne Ultimatum' (Universal)