JAVIER BARDEM - OSCAR WINNERS: THE RUNDOWN

Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men made a stronger-than-expected showing at Sunday night's Academy Awards presentation. Although it was favored to win the best picture Oscar, it was not expected to take three major awards -- for best director (the Coens), best adapted screenplay (also the Coens), and best supporting actor (Javier Bardem). In another surprise, the best actress went to French actress Marion Cotillard for her portrayal of legendary singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. (Cotillard is only the second woman in Oscar history to win the best-actress Oscar in a foreign-language film; the other was Sophia Loren for 1961's Two Women.) Equally surprising was the supporting-actress award to Tilda Swinton for her role in Michael Clayton. Daniel Day-Lewis, on the other hand, had been a clear-cut favorite to win the best actor award -- and he did so -- for There Will Be Blood. But that film had also been favored to win several other top awards, and didn't, save in the cinematography category. Other winners had been widely predicted. Diablo Cody took the best original screenplay award for Juno. Pixar's Brad Bird picked up the animation Oscar for Ratatouille. The Austrian-produced The Counterfeiters, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, won for best foreign-language film, the Iraq-war related Taxi to the Dark Side won the feature documentary Oscar, while the gay-rights-themed Freeheld won the Oscar for documentary shorts.

25/02/2008