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And the oscar goes to...
No Country for Old Men won Best Motion Picture at this year's Oscars while Daniel Day-Lewis walked away with the golden statuette for Best Actor.
- AP
- Published: 23:40 February 25, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- Winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Tilda Swinton, Marion Cotillard and Javier Bardem.
No Country for Old Men won Best Motion Picture at this year's Oscars while Daniel Day-Lewis walked away with the golden statuette for Best Actor
The Coen brothers completed their journey from the fringes to Hollywood's mainstream, their crime saga No Country for Old Men winning four Academy Awards, including best picture, in a ceremony that also featured a strong international flavour.
Europeans swept the acting categories on Sunday night. British actor Daniel Day-Lewis and France's Marion Cotillard were best lead actor and actress. The supporting actor and actress prizes went to Spain's Javier Bardem and British actress Tilda Swinton.
'Very thankful'
Bardem won for supporting actor in No Country, which earned Joel and Ethan Coen best director, best adapted screenplay and the best-picture honour as producers.
Accepting the directing honour alongside his brother, Joel Coen recalled how they were making films since childhood, including one at the Minneapolis airport called Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go.
"What we do now doesn't feel that much different from what we were doing then," Joel Coen said. "We're very thankful to all of you out there for continuing to let us play in our corner of the sandbox."
Day-Lewis won his second best-actor Academy Award for the oil-boom epic There Will Be Blood, while La Vie En Rose star Cotillard was a surprise winner for best actress, riding the spirit of Edith Piaf to Oscar triumph over British screen legend Julie Christie, who had been expected to win for Away From Her.
Swinton won for her portrayal as a malevolent attorney in Michael Clayton.
As a raging, conniving, acquisitive petroleum pioneer caught up in California's oil boom of the early 20th century, Day-Lewis won for a part that could scarcely have been more different than his understated role as a writer with severe cerebral palsy in 1989's My Left Foot.
Knighthood
"My deepest thanks to the academy for whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town," Day-Lewis said.
Day-Lewis walked up the steps to accept his trophy from Helen Mirren, then went down on one knee before her, head bowed. Mirren, last year's best-actress winner for The Queen, picked up his cue, touching Lewis's Oscar to his shoulders as she would a royal sword.
"That's the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood," the Englishman said.
The Coens missed out on a chance to make Oscar history — four wins for a single film — when they lost the editing prize, for which they were nominated under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.
The Bourne Ultimatum won the editing Oscar and swept all three categories in which it was nominated, including sound editing and sound mixing.
Past winners for their screenplay to 1996's Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen joined an elite list of filmmakers to win three Oscars in a single night, including Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather Part II), James Cameron (Titanic) and Billy Wilder (The Apartment).
Cotillard, the first winner ever for a French-language performance, tearfully thanked her director, Olivier Dahan.
"Maestro Olivier, you rocked my life. You have truly rocked my life," said Cotillard, a French beauty who is a dynamo as Piaf, playing the warbling chanteuse through three decades, from raw late teens as a singer rising from the gutter through international stardom and her final days in her frail 40s.
"Thank you, life; thank you, love. And it is true there (are) some angels in this city."
A relatively fresh face in Hollywood, Cotillard has US credits that include Big Fish, A Good Year and the upcoming Public Enemies, featuring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.
With a heartbreaking turn as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer's in Away From Her, Christie had been expected to win her second Oscar. She won best actress 42 years ago for Darling.
'Spitting image'
Heavies ruled the first acting prizes. Along with Day-Lewis's greedy oilman, Bardem played an unshakeable executioner in No Country and Swinton played a conniving attorney who stops at nothing to achieve her goals in Michael Clayton.
"I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this," said Swinton, fondly looking at her Oscar statuette.
"Really, truly, the same shape head, and it has to be said, the buttocks. And I'm giving this to him, because there's no way I'd be in America at all, ever, on a plane if it wasn't for him," said Swinton.
Backstage, Swinton said she was "so stoked, as they say, I think it's fantastic... I'm amazed I'm still standing. But I'm not complaining. It's good."
Swinton, 47, born in London into a patrician Scottish military family, noted that other foreign actors were taking home the gold on Sunday. "Hollywood is built on Europeans," she said. "Don't tell everybody, but we're everywhere."
Horrible haircut
Bardem won for his fearsome turn in No Country.
"Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough to think I could do that and for putting one of the most horrible haircuts in history over my head," said Bardem, referring to the sinister variation of a page-boy bob his character sported.
Host Jon Stewart joked that Bardem's haircut in the film combined "Hannibal Lecter's murderousness with Dorothy Hamill's wedge-cut".
Favourite rodent
Mickey Mouse gained a rival as Hollywood's favourite rodent as the rat tale Ratatouille was named best animated film, the second Oscar win in the category for director Brad Bird.
Bird thanked his junior-high guidance counsellor, who expressed repeated scepticism over his desire to become a filmmaker.
"It went on like this until we were sick of each other," said Bird, who also won the animation Oscar for 2004's The Incredibles and shared a nomination for original screenplay for Ratatouille. "I only realised just recently that he gave me the perfect training for the movie business."
The ceremony's montage of photos and film clips of stars, filmmakers and others in cinema who died in the past year ended with a scene from Brokeback Mountain featuring Australian actor Heath Ledger, who died of a prescription drug overdose last month.
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