Photo gallery: Red carpet arrivals
Photo gallery: Red carpet arrivals: Part 2
KEY POINTS:
The 80th Academy Awards was meant to be the year of death and despair. After all, all the best picture nominations - bar the optimistic Juno - took a very dim view of the world.
If your character made it through the film alive and well, you were one of the lucky ones - or you were holding the smoking gun.
Most of the leading nominees shared a range of medical and mental conditions. Even the year's token musical, which usually provides the light relief, was a bloody gothic nightmare.
Yes, it might have been the year of Oscar the grouch. And largely the winners offered few major surprises - as predicted No Country for Old Men won best picture and the Coen brothers won best director among its haul of four awards.
But in between the octogenarian flashback nostalgia (which slowed the ceremony) and abundant showbiz and political in-jokes from presenter Jon Stewart (which kept it entertaining) there were plenty of fairy-tale endings in a year of movies without them.
There was French actress Marion Cotillard's win for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in the biopic La Vie En Rose, her acceptance speech instantly making her a candidate for Best Thank You by an Overcome Foreigner, an unofficial category previously won by Roberto Benigni. Though you'd be hard pressed to find many Americans among the winning actors - a Spaniard and two Brits.
Even the winning song, Falling Slowly, was from the Irish indie hit Once, written and performed by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who played the lead characters in the no-budget musical. It was as much an award for the giantkiller of a film itself and accepting the award Hansard looked the very picture of a man whose dreams had come true.
And also among the fairy tales was the win for Diablo Cody, the former stripper turned first-time screenwriter of sleeper hit Juno.
Of the few surprises, Tilda Swinton's win as supporting actress for the George Clooney legal thriller Michael Clayton was probably the biggest shock of the night.
But spare a thought for cinematographer Roger Deakins, nominated twice this year for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men. He's been nominated five times before and he didn't win yesterday either. The Oscar went to Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood.
Second best movie by Oscar count wasn't There Will Be Blood with its two but thriller The Bourne Ultimatum which won three out of its three nods in the categories of editing, sound editing and sound mix - again proving it may be a blockbuster only deserving of recognition for its technical prowess, but it's a hyper-fast cut above the rest.
