Oscars: the results

Find out which films scooped the top prizes at this year's Academy Awards

After twenty years of making great, idiosyncratic paeans to past Hollywood Oscar fare, the wit, meticulousness and intellect of the Coen brothers has finally been recognised by ‘The Academy’, as they have walked away with Best Film and Best Director trophies for their violent and blackly comic neo-Western, ‘No Country for Old Men’.

While many will be shedding a tear for the lack of success of PT Anderson’s astounding ‘There Will Be Blood’ – for which Daniel Day-Lewis rightly nabbed a Best Actor gong – pundits have noted that it was perhaps too relentlessly dark to be given Best Film, and that the Coens' work has nestled within it a light, almost endearing, core in Josh Brolin’s hapless Llewellyn Moss, whose decision to take $1 million from the bloody scene of a desert drug deal incites the wrath of Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigur.

Wouldn’t it be helpful (to filmmakers and journalists) if one of the judges was forced to take the podium and give a post-awards press conference to justify and explain any rogue decision-making, as it would be interesting to know whether the verdicts do actually have any bearing on the current political climate in the US, or whether directors are awarded for their individual films or their entire body of work?

One result that may have had a few Academy dignitaries scoffing into their highballs was the success of Marion Cottilard who lip-synched her way to the Best Actress prize in Olivier Dahan’s otherwise garbled Edith Piaf biopic, ‘La Vie en Rose’.

Though many had tipped Julie Christie for her sensitive performance in the little-seen Alzheimer’s drama ‘Away From Her’, it must have been the result of a bout of collective amnesia, as we should have known that Oscar loves gritty imitations of troubled musical icons.

The supporting actor prizes came in as expected, with Bardem winning for ‘No Country…’ and Tilda Swinton for ‘Michael Clayton’. In some of the smaller categories, Germany made it two-in-a-row with the victory of ‘The Counterfeiters’, the only foreign language film nominated to have been released in UK cinemas.

The excellent ‘Ratatouille’ triumphed over Marjane Satrapi’s equally-excellent ‘Persepolis’, but anyone who thought a sardonic coming-of-age comedy about Iranian civil rights would beat a story about a talking rat who can cook needs their head testing.

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