"No Country", Few Surprises At Oscars

,At the 80th Academy Awards Sunday night, the Motion Picture Academy's fascination with violent, depressing movies continued with No Country For Old Men winning four Oscars, including Best Picture. Joel and Ethan Coen took home two awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and for Best Directing, then showed us why they'd rather let their films do the talking with their acceptance speeches, in which they didn't say much. Javier Badem won for Best Supporting Actor, then proceeded to thank his mother in Spanish.

Daniel Day-Lewis, who was expected by most pundits to win Best Actor for There Will Be Blood, did so.

Marion Cotillard, in one of the few surprises of the evening, won as Best Actress for her role as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. A Frenchwoman playing another Frenchwoman. What a concept.

Tilda Swinton took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress with her role in Michael Clayton. In her acceptance speech, Swinton said she'd give the Oscar to her agent, because it looks just like him. Was he in the audience, by any chance?

Congratulations are in order for Betty Rubble--excuse me, Diablo Cody--for her Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Juno. Only Cody could have pulled off the feat of being better known for writing a film than any of the actors who were in it.

Other Oscar observations:

• Jon Stewart did a better job hosting the ABC telecast than the last time he did this. His opening monologue was excellent, and kept things moving in spite of the lack of bad montages. Now, aren't you glad the writers' strike is over?
• A song from Once won for Best Original Song. And, unlike Disney's Enchanted, it only had to be nominated once.
• The Best Foreign Language Film went to The Counterfeiters from Austria. We know the Holocaust is an important topic, but has there ever been a film in that genre that didn't win an award of some kind?
• In the category of Interesting Presenters: Owen Wilson, a few months removed from an alleged suicide attempt, presented an award for Live Action Short Film. Jerry Seinfeld as an animated bee. Two guys who were introduced as Halle Berry and Dame Judith Evans who don't look anything like them. Hilary Swank introducing this year's Obit Reel. Spokesman for the American Soldier Tom Hanks, with help from some of George W. Bush's troops in Iraq via satellite, presented the Documentary Short Subject award. And Jack Nicholson, His Shaded Eminence, introduced 79 Best Picture Oscar winners.

Now let's see how many of these fine films do when they're released on DVD, so cheapskates like me can actually see what all the fuss was about.