HOLLYWOOD -- "Could you double-check the envelope please?"

	Associated Press photos Martin Scorsese accepts the Academy Award for Best Director for his film "The Departed." Click photo for larger image. Related articles 2007 Oscar winners Kisses and disses for stars' attempts at Oscar style Show flat, boring despite amiable DeGeneres The PG's Oscar blog

That was the humble reaction of Martin Scorsese to finally -- finally! -- taking home Oscar gold.

The beloved New York filmmaker was crowned Best Director, and his movie, "The Departed," won Best Picture last night at the 79th Academy Awards.

Scorsese, previously nominated for "Raging Bull" (1980), "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), "GoodFellas" (1990), "Gangs of New York" (2002) and "The Aviator" (2005), snagged the Oscar so many thought he has long deserved for "The Departed," an ultra-violent tale of double-crossing cops and vicious Irish mobsters in Boston.

The directing award was presented by the impressive triumvirate of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Scorsese made it a quartet, hitting the podium to a standing ovation. After thanking the stars of the film, he said "So many people over the years have been wishing this for me ... I thank you, this is for you."

"The Departed" also won for Film Editing and Adapted Screenplay for William Monahan, who accepted the award with a shout-out to another nominee. "The movie that made me want to be a screenwriter," he said, "was Robert Bolt's 'Lawrence of Arabia.' I don't know what could have happened in the universe to end up at the same Oscars as Peter O'Toole."

Helen Mirren accepts the Oscar for Best Actress. Click photo for larger image.

In the acting categories, the Oscars went to a queen and a dictator.

Helen Mirren traded her vanity for the part of a lifetime -- and an Academy Award as Best Actress. Her win was one of the most preordained in years, and even her fellow nominees had no illusions about overthrowing "The Queen."

The wife of director Taylor Hackford, Mirren is known for her willingness to shed her clothes, but Queen Elizabeth II demanded a gray wig and clothes that could, at best, be called demure or outright dowdy.

The 61-year-old Mirren looked more her radiant self last night, accepting the Oscar and paying tribute to the source material. "For 50 years and more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hair style. ... She weathered many, many storms." Of the award, Mirren said, "My sister told me all kids love to get gold stars, and this is the biggest and best gold star I've ever had in my whole life."

Like Mirren, Forest Whitaker portrayed a real-life person with audacity and accuracy. From his first second on screen in "The Last King of Scotland," his Idi Amin is a larger-than-life bundle of charm, cruelty and contradictions.

	Forrest Whitaker leaves the stage with his Oscar. Click photo for larger image.

Whitaker didn't want to do a direct impersonation but dutifully worked out how the Ugandan dictator talked, studied Amin's first language, Swahili, and tried to capture the essence of the man.

Whitaker admitted "I thought I would be a little overwhelmed; I am" and went on to give an emotional speech about how his movie dreams started as a kid in the back seat at the drive-in movie theater and how his goal was to connect with the "light" in all of us.

Along with Scorsese, it had also been a long wait for Alan Arkin, who played the irascible grandpa in "Little Miss Sunshine." He won Best Supporting Actor in a category where a lot of the early signs pointed to Eddie Murphy for "Dreamgirls."

It was the third nomination for the 72-year-old Arkin and the first in almost 40 years. He was nominated in 1966 for his film debut, "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming," and 1968's "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter."

His low profile at the Oscars may account for the veteran's nervousness at the podium last night. Arkin read his speech and got choked up in the process. "More than anything I am deeply moved by the open-hearted appreciation our small film has received, which in these fragmented times speaks so openly of the possibility of innocence, growth and connection."

Jennifer Hudson accepts her Oscar. Click photo for larger image.

Best Supporting Actress went to, of all things, a former "American Idol" reject for a role in which she plays an rejected singer. Jennifer Hudson, who started her singing career in a Chicago church choir and hit prime-time on "Idol" in 2004, won for her turn as Miss Effie White in "Dreamgirls."

"I didn't think I was going to win," she said tearfully. "If my grandmother was here to see me now. She was my biggest inspiration for everything because she was a singer and she had the passion for it, but she never got the chance."

Along with an "Idol" contender, the Hollywood elite last night was cracked by a onetime member of the Beltway elite -- the one who came a few hanging chads away from being the president in 2000. The Best Documentary Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth" goes to producer Davis Guggenheim, but he promised to share it with the creative force of the film, former vice president Al Gore. The unorthodox "An Inconvenient Truth" captures Gore's riveting slide show on global warming.

Earlier in the evening, Gore appeared as a presenter with best actor nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, who prodded him with "Is there anything you want to announce?" Gore made light of it, giving in, only to let the music interrupt his faux declaration of a presidential run.

Accepting the Oscar later in the show, Gore began dramatically with, "My fellow Americans," which drew a laugh, before he went on to say, "people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue, it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That's a renewable resource."

	Melissa Etheridge Click photo for larger image.

"An Inconvenient Truth" also had the Best Song, according to the Oscars, with Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up." She said, "We can be the generation that woke up and changed."

"Little Miss Sunshine," considered an upset possibility for Best Picture, earned two awards including Original Screenplay (Michael Arndt) and Supporting Actor (Arkin). Arndt, collecting the screenplay award, noted that when he was a kid his family actually took a 600-mile trip in a VW van with a broken clutch. "It ended up being the funnest things we did together."

Much of the early Oscar debate was over "Dreamgirls" being snubbed in the Best Picture category. It had eight nominations and won two. Not much was said, however, about "Pan's Labyrinth." The frightening gothic fairy tale from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro was on the way to a monster night with three early awards, including Art Direction, Cinematography and Makeup.

It did fall short for the biggest of its potential prizes. In an upset, the Foreign-Language Film Oscar went to "The Lives of Others," a German feature about a disillusioned officer working for the secret police.

"The Lives of Others" director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, asked about beating out the director of "Pan's Labyrinth," said, "In a way, I'm sad for Guillermo but not that sad." The two have been traveling on the awards circuit together and the German has proven himself a favorite of critics who can always count on thoughtful responses to their questions, in English or German. He paid tribute to Elia Kazan and Robert Zemeckis as directors who have influenced him, along with Alfred Hitchcock, Sydney Pollack, Francis Coppola and Peter Weir.

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Click photo for larger image.

"I was told if you have an Oscar, you can just get into any party," with bodyguards shrinking away like Superman from kryptonite, he said.

In other Oscar action:

"Babel" won for best Score, its only award.

A bunch of penguins beat a bunch of animated stock cars to the finish line, as "Happy Feet" edged out "Cars" for animated feature. Director George Miller ("Babe") said, "I asked my kids what should I say; they said, "Thank all the men for wearing penguin suits."

"Pirates of the Caribbean," the top film at the box office in 2006, got one small moment in the spotlight, winning for Visual Effects.

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Feb. 28, 2007) "Little Miss Sunshine" earned two Oscars on Feb. 25, 2007 (for supporting actor Alan Arkin and original screenplay). The number of awards was incorrect in this story about the Academy Awards as originally published Feb. 26, 2007.