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Herald movie reviewer and entertainment editor Russell Baillie on who deserved to take home the little golden man, and who didn't.
5.43pm: The Coen brothers take best director with siblings Ethan and Joel proving men of few words as they finally get recognition for a long and mostly brilliant career of left-field American movies. With best director in the bag it's inevitable that they will be making a quick return to the stage to pick up best picture, though producer Scott Rudin - who had the very smart idea of getting them to adapt the Cormac McCarthy novel - does most of the talking in the night's final thank you.
5.34pm: Daniel-Day Lewis, the night's surest bet, wins best actor for There Will Be Blood, which means heading into the final awards - best director and best picture - both it and No Country for Old Men are tied on two wins each.
5.25: Things are looking up for Juno - its status as the year's indie darling is confirmed with its win for best original screenplay for writer Diablo Cody.
5.20pm: Atonement finally wins something - the Brit movie taking best score for composer Dario Marianelli for its contemporary classical score. The documentary short category nominees are read and announced by a group of US military personnel serving in Iraq - the Oscars' support-the-troops gesture.
The winner is Freeheld, about the then terminally ill Detective Lieutenant Laurel Hester who spent the final year of her life fighting a policy that didn't allow her to transfer her pension to her domestic partner. The best documentary feature - in which former winner Michael Moore's Sicko is almost nominated - goes to Taxi to the Dark Side about an Afghan taxi driver beaten to death in 2002 while in US military custody. Funny how things work out.
5pm: At last the Daniel Day-Lewis oil drama There Will Be Blood gets a look in - winning best cinematography for Robert Elswit, who was up against double nominee Roger Deakins who shot both The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford as No Country For Old Men.
4.20pm: After a night of Disney showtunes from Enchanted, Glenn Hansard and Marketa Irglova - who also played the lead characters in the Irish indie musical Once - take away the Oscar for best song for Falling Slow from the sleeper hit. Oscar seems to be developing some musical taste in his old age.
4pm: Marion Cotillard takes best actress for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose and instantly becomes a candidate for best thank you by an overcome foreigner, an unofficial category previously won by Roberto Benigni. With Ellen Page being trounced in this category -it looks like Juno's chances as the feelgood outsider,"thank goodness for pregnant teenagers" said Stewart earlier - are diminishing as the night wears on.
3.55pm: Yes it might be the threequel in an espionage series but The Bourne Ultimatum is a great film and seems to be proving it once more. It's taken out every technical category it's nominated in, sound editing, sound mixing, and film editing. If only they had one for best fight...
3.45: It looks like No Country for Old Men is back on track with its win for best adapted screenplay for the Coen brothers for their script for their film of the Cormac McCarthy novel.
3.36pm: The night's first big surprise - albeit in a category which was wide open, though many thought Cate Blanchett's turn as a faux Bob Dylan I'm Not There might be novel enough .
Tilda Swinton wins best supporting actress for Michael Clayton, maybe the prospects for the George Clooney-led corporate law thriller are finally looking up. Swinton promises to give her Oscar to her American agent who apparently is a spitting image of the statuette. For a stern arthouse actress, she's really quite funny that Tilda.
3:20pm: In what might be a sign of things to come Javier Bardem takes out the best supporting actor award for his cold-blooded killer in the much-nominated No Country for Old Men. He thanks his mother in Spanish. Ole.
3pm: And so after an age of blather spent on the red carpet (funny how those with the least to win have the most to say), the 80th Oscars kicks off. It might be a significant birthday but there's a nervous air to proceedings. Presenter Jon Stewart connects the show's undercurrents - the writer's strike which almost did for the ceremony, the griminess of the topline nominees, the looming US presidential elections - into one hilarious opening monologue.
The first set of awards are predictable - costume design goes to the rampant frockfest that is Elizabeth: The Golden Age, animation to Pixar's latest wonder Ratatouille, art direction to the gothic extravagance of Sweeney Todd.
Though it seems even the technical categories are ignoring the year's bigger blockbusters, the box office-challenged The Golden Compass wins visual effects over hits Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End; Edith Piaf's biopic La Vie En Rose pips both Pirates and the Eddie Murphy turkey Norbit - a film earlier singled out by Stewart.
But if the Oscars are grim and highbrow this year, the ceremony is going big on 80 years of nostalgia to up the feelgood factor.
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Check back after the awards ceremony today for his take on this year's Oscars.
Russell says the films dominating this year aren't the prestige Oscar vehicles of old and the only title which resembles one, Atonement, seems to be out of the running.
He notes it's a year of extravagant acting led by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will be Blood and of Great American soul-searching whether it's Blood, the Coens' No Country, or the corporate-paranoia thriller Michael Clayton.
Ahead of the event, he said director-wise, it looks like the Coens have it sewn up and No Country For Old Men should also prove a rare best picture choice - one that the Academy won't be embarrassed by in years to come.
