No Country for Old Men wins Oscar gold

Crime thriller No Country for Old Men blew away the competition on Oscar night, with the Coen brothers film picking up the coveted best picture honour as well as three other prominent Academy Awards in Hollywood Sunday night.

"My brother Ethan and I have been making stories with movie cameras since we were kids," Joel Coen said as the two siblings accepted the trophy for best director at the Kodak Theatre.

"What we do now doesn't feel very much different than what we were doing then … we're very thankful to all of you out there for letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox."

The filmmaking duo had also made a trip to the podium earlier in the evening when their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bestseller was named best adapted screenplay, beating out a host of nominees that included Toronto actress and director Sarah Polley (who had been nominated for Away From Her).

Spanish actor Javier Bardem won the best supporting actor award for his portrayal of No Country's chilling, unstoppable assassin.

"I want to thank the Coens for being crazy enough to think that I could do that and for putting one of the most horrible haircuts in history over my head," he quipped before dedicating his Oscar to his mother, who accompanied him Sunday night.

Bardem, a prominent face in Spanish cinema, impressed both audiences and critics with his portrayal in the Coen brothers film. He, the Coens and the film itself had won a flood of film season nods leading up to the Oscar gala.

Bardem was among the quartet of European actors that scooped the acting prizes on Oscar night, with thespians from the U.K. and France also winning top awards.

British actor Daniel Day-Lewis fulfilled expectations as winner in the lead actor category, for his turn as an obsessed, early 20th century oil prospector in There Will Be Blood.

"My deepest thanks for whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town," he offered, before adding his thanks to director Paul Thomas Anderson.

French actress Marion Cotillard also triumphed, with her portrayal of chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose netting her the best actress crown.

Shaking with emotion, she hailed writer-director Olivier Dahan a "maestro" who has "rocked my life."

"It is true, there is [sic] some angels in this city!" she declared. The film also picked up an award for best achievement in makeup.

The Oscar for best supporting actress went to the U.K.'s Tilda Swinton for her role as a ruthless, conniving attorney in Michael Clayton.

"I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this," the Scottish actress said as she looked 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."

Canadians lose out

Canadians had made a strong showing among this year's nominees but lost out come Oscar night.

Quirky teen pregnancy comedy Juno, which was filmed in Vancouver, had received four nominations: for best picture, for Montreal-born director Jason Reitman, its Halifax-born star Ellen Page, and for its first-time screenwriter, Diablo Cody.

Cody, an American, was Juno's sole winner, winning the best original screenplay Oscar.

"This is for all the writers," Cody said, as she also extended her thanks to "the superhuman Ellen Page," and Reitman, "whom I consider a member of my family."

Canada's two nominees for best animated short film — I Met the Walrus and Madame Tutli-Putli — were passed over for the prize by Peter and the Wolf, a stop-motion retelling of Sergei Prokofiev's classic children's fable.

Red carpet glamour despite rainy weather

Despite heavy rain on Sunday, Hollywood celebrities turned out in droves and turned up the glamour for the 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony.

Host Jon Stewart presided over a brisk show, which opened with a well-received monologue that spanned poking fun at the predominantly dark best picture nominees to jokes about Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Spy thriller The Bourne Ultimatum won a trio of technical trophies (sound editing, sound mixing and film editing) in an evening where the balance of the Oscars largely went to a range of films.

Other winners included:

• Ratatouille - animated film.
• There Will Be Blood - cinematography.
• The Golden Compass - visual effects.
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age - costume design.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - art direction.
• The Counterfeiters - foreign film.
• Taxi to the Dark Side - documentary feature.
• Freeheld - documentary short subject.
• Le Mozart des Pickpockets - live action short.
• Atonement - original score.
• Falling Slowly, Once - original song.

The evening's presentations were often punctuated with clips from past winners and montages from the past eight decades of Academy Award galas. The ceremony also included the presentation of an honorary Oscar to legendary production designer Robert Boyle, perhaps best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock.

The 98-year-old said that among all the conflicts he'd seen over his lifetime, "there was one bright image in this whole life of ours and that was the arts, and particularly the art of the moviemakers, of the moving image, that we all love."

The night offered a celebration both of the year's acclaimed films and, it seemed, Hollywood's relief at the recent end of the screenwriters strike that had chilled the community over the holiday season.

The strike, which lasted more than three months, was settled just a couple weeks before Sunday's broadcast, forcing the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences into a flurry of last-minute preparations for the traditionally glitzy festivities.