2008 Academy Awards Winners

Oscar continues to have a taste for blood…

“No Country for Old Men,” a dark cat-and-mouse tale involving a sheriff and his search for a serial murderer, received four Academy Awards Sunday night at the 80th annual ceremony, including best picture, direction and screenplay — awards it shares with last year’s homage to hardcore violence, “The Departed.”

Joel and Ethan Coen won three awards for their effort, putting them in a class with Billy Wilder, Francis Ford Coppola, James L. Brooks and Peter Jackson, the only people to win as producer, director and writer in a single year.

The Coens, who had previously won for writing “Fargo,” became only the second team to win the directing trophy. Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise won for “West Side Story.”

The 80th Oscars were also particularly good to first-timers and foreigners. Winners in actress, song, score and supporting actor fit both categories; original screenplay, cinematography and docu short went to talent that have never previously won. “No Country” producer Scott Rudin was a first time winner; Brit Daniel Day-Lewis won the acting statue, the second of his career. The foreign language win for “The Counterfeiters” was the first Oscar win for Austria.

All four acting winners hail from Europe. And three of them pulled trifectas with their wins Sunday.

French thesp Marion Cotillard, who heavily supported her portrayal of French chanteuse Ediah Piaf in “La Vie en rose” with personal appearances in the U.S., became only the fifth person to register an Oscar acting win in a foreign language, she also won the BAFTA and Cesar awards for her perf. The win was the seventh lead actress win in the last nine Oscars for a portrayal of real person.

And Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem both won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for this year to go next to their Oscars in the trophy cases.

Tilda Swinton, who brought “Michael Clayton” its single win, won the BAFTA for her perf in the legal thriller.

Winners also provided a bit of tangible international flavor to the telecast: Bardem delivered a portion of his acceptance speech in Spanish, live-action short winner Philippe Pollet-Villard spoke in French and, with an Irish brogue, songwriter Glen Hansard encouraged the audience to “make art, make art.”

With critics groups and the guilds keeping the awards spread out among the many contenders, the Oscars did little to solidify the field. Besides “No Country,” only three films received multiple nods — “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “There Will be Blood” and “La Vie en Rose” — and 10 films received single honors.

“Bourne” won the two sound categories and the editing trophy; “Rose” plucked actress and makeup. There were 13 single winners.

Among the dozen films with at least three noms, only “Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “Transformers” and “Enchnated” were shut out.

Three songs from “Enchanted” were up for the Oscar and for the second year in a row, a first-time song nominee — Hansard and his partner Marketa Irglova — won. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz were up for the three trophies this year; three of Henry Krieger’s songs from “Dreamgirls’ were nominated last year.

Irglova, in a true Oscar rarity, was allowed to return to the stage to deliver an acceptance speech after being cut off as the kudocast went to commercial break following Hansgard’s comments.

While “No Country” certainly becomes the most talked-about film in America, it has a ways to catch up with “The Departed,” at the box office. Its cume is sitting at $64 million. At the time of the Oscars last year, “The Departed” had grossed $132 million.

Beginning with “Crash” three years ago, the best picture award has gone to films populated by characters dealing with lawlessness and moral ambiguity. The films contain powerful depictions of violence, marking the first time in Oscar’s 80 years that such a string has existed. Oscar, when it has honored brazenly violent pics, it has done so in a more isolated fashion: When “American Beauty” and its tale of suburban angst won the Oscar for the films of 1999, it had followed a triumvirate of more romantic fare — “Shakespeare in Love,” “Titanic” and “The English Patient.”

It is the fourth consecutive year — dating back to “Million Dollar Baby” — in which a film set in modern times has won the top prize, another first for the Oscars. The Academy had long been fond of period pieces: Only two best picture winners in the 1990s and three in the ‘80s were set in modern times.

And the winners are…

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
George Clooney – Michael Clayton
Daniel Day Lewis – There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Viggo Mortensen – Eastern Promises
Tommy Lee Jones – In the Valley of Elah

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Casey Affleck – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem – No Country For Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman – Charlie Wilson’s War
Hal Holbrook – Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson – Michael Clayton

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Cate Blanchett – Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie – Away From Her
Marion Cotillard – La Vie En Rose
Laura Linney – The Savages
Ellen Page- Juno

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Cate Blanchett – I’m Not There
Ruby Dee – American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan – Atonement
Amy Ryan – Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton – Michael Clayton

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Surf’s Up
Persepolis
Ratatouille

DIRECTING
Paul Thomas Anderson – There Will Be Blood
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen – No Country For Old Men
Tony Gilroy – Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman – Juno
Julian Schnabel – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

BEST PICTURE
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
Atonement
Away from Her
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
Juno
Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
The Savages

MUSIC (SCORE)
Atonement
The Kite Runner
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma

MUSIC (SONG)
“Falling Slowly” – Once
“Happy Working Song” – Enchanted
“Raise it Up” – August Rush
“So Close” – Enchanted
“That’s How You Know ” – Enchanted

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
No End in Sight
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
Sicko
Taxi to the Dark Side
War/Dance

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Freeheld
La Corona (The Crown)
Salim Baba
Sari’s Mother

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Même Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Peter & the Wolf

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
At Night
Il Supplente (The Substitute)
Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)
Tanghi Argentini
The Tonto Woman

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Beaufort
The Counterfeiters
Katyń
Mongol
12

ART DIRECTION
American Gangster
Atonement
The Golden Compass
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

COSTUME DESIGN
Across the Universe
Atonement
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
La Vie en Rose
Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

FILM EDITING
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

MAKEUP
La Vie en Rose
Norbit
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

SOUND EDITING
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
There Will Be Blood
Transformers

SOUND MIXING
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma
Transformers

VISUAL EFFECTS
The Golden Compass
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Transformers

Click here to read the Oscar winners’ reactions.

Click here to read a complete Oscar winners’ recap.

Sources: Variety and Cinema Blend

~ by Danielle on 25/02/2008.