No country for American actors

That No Country for Old Men took the best picture and best director Oscars last night was about as surprising as learning earlier in the day that Raul Castro had been chosen to follow his brother Fidel as President of Cuba.

No Country, directed by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, picked up two further key Oscars - best supporting actor for Javier Bardem for his performance as psycho-killer Anton Chigurh, and best adapted screenplay, also to the Coen brothers, for their bleak and violent adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bleak and violent novel.

But the evening was not without surprises, the biggest being that all of four acting Oscars went to Europeans for the first time in the Academy's history.

First came Tilda Swinton, visibly stunned when her name was called as best supporting actress for her role as a corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton. Apparently unprepared, Swinton promised to give her Oscar to her American agent because she felt that he and the statue had similar buttocks.

After her recent Bafta win, it was less of a surprise to see Marion Cotillard take the best actress award for her bravura performance as tragic French singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. Julie Christie, whom many had favoured, looked genuinely thrilled for her and perhaps relieved she didn't have to make the journey to the stage.

Daniel Day-Lewis was voted best actor for his punishing tour de force as brutal oilman Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood - an award that, like Bardem's best supporting actor prize, was widely expected.

"This sprang like a golden sapling out of the mad beautiful head of Paul Thomas Anderson,” said Day-Lewis, ears adorned with his trademark gold hoops, his hair trimmed a little, of his director.

Although No Country was clearly the evening's big winner, it won only four Oscars, far fewer than most best picture winners. That left more Oscars to be handed out as consolation prizes to many of the year's other top films.

British hope Atonement won best original score; Sweeney Todd won art direction; Elizabeth: The Golden Age took costume design; The Bourne Ultimatum won best editing and sound mixing; even The Golden Compass, a commercial flop in the US, won something - best visual effects. Only The Diving Bell and the Butterfly came away empty-handed.

Juno, the year's crowd-pleaser, which some had feared might win best picture, took just one Oscar - best original screenplay for Hollywood's newest writing sensation, ex-stripper Diablo Cody.

The scatter-shot spread of the Oscars perhaps reflected the Academy's feeling that this was a strong roster of films, perhaps the strongest since the 1970s. Both No Country and There Will Be Blood seem to have reflected the dark mood of a country mired in war and about to go into recession.

Yet neither film has hit a chord with middle America, and it's unlikely that last night's Oscar broadcast, expected to be one of the lowest-rated in years, and the award of acting Oscars to mainly unknown Europeans, will change that. Especially when Daniel Day-Lewis, asked back-stage what he does to unwind, snapped: "The great thing is, I don't have to talk about that, I can just do it," he said. "Why? Because it's none of your f-ing business, that's why!" ·