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