photo courtesy of MyCine

In a year filled with dark films, perhaps the darkest, “No Country for Old Men,” took home the top three honors at last night’s Oscars. The maverick Joel and Ethan Coen won three awards — Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture — during the course of the evening, thanking the academy for “letting us play in our own corner of the sandbox” when they won their first award, and then seeming increasingly emotionless as the night went on.

The acting categories were an international affair, with all four awards going to non-Americans. Javier Bardem, of course, came away victorious in the Supporting Actor race, making sure to joke about his now infamous haircut upon accepting the award. The Supporting Actress trophy went to a stunned Tilda Swinton (“Michael Clayton”), whose performance beat out Cate Blanchett’s gender-bending turn as Bob Dylan (“I’m Not There”) and Amy Ryan’s much lauded work in “Gone Baby Gone.”

In the Lead Actress category the Academy proved that its love of rewarding actors who play real people (think Jamie Fox, Reese Witherspoon) trumps its long-standing disregard for actresses who lip-sync (think Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood), by giving French actress Marion Cotillard the Oscar for her portrayal of “the Little Sparrow” Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose,” despite the fact that another actress provided the singing. (“La Vie en Rose” also won the award for Makeup Achievement, beating out “Norbit,” much to everyone’s relief). In the Lead Actor category, it was certainly no surprise when Daniel Day Lewis won his second Oscar for his performance as Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.”
In the other major categories, the Academy acknowledged a wide range of films. Brad Bird (who won three years ago for “The Incredibles”) made a return trip to the podium to accept the Best Animated Feature award for “Ratatouille.” The Documentary Feature prize went to “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a documentary about torture. “There Will Be Blood” won for cinematography, while “Atonement’s” score (which uses the typewriter as an instrument) won the Best Score statuette. A song by the young leads of the independent film “Once” beat out three chirpy Menken-Schwartz production numbers from “Enchanted” to win the Best Original Song Oscar. And, in the Best Original Screenplay Category, Hollywood newcomer (and former stripper) Diablo Cody won the award for her much-quoted “Juno” script.