HOLLYWOOD -- "No Country for Old Men," a new-fangled western with spikes of vivid violence and dark humor, was named Best Picture last night at the 80th Academy Awards.

The Coen brothers movie dramatizes the fast-approaching end of a way of Texas life, with cattle rustlers giving way to drug dealers and one crazy killer who calls strangers "Friendo," flips coins for lives and opens the story by strangling a lawman with his handcuffs.

The movie's directors, Joel and Ethan Coen, became the first siblings to win the Best Director Oscar and the second duo to share that honor. The first was Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, who won Oscars for directing "West Side Story."

"Ethan and I have been making stories with movie cameras since we were kids," Joel Coen said, recalling a movie they made in the '60s called "Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go." The brothers also won for their adapted screenplay, making them rare three-time winners.

When it came to acting, Oscar had a far-flung, foreign flavor as he turned 80 and looked overseas for the acting winners. None of the four acting honorees were Americans: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem took the top acting prizes.

Academy Award voters, in a first, also honored a former stripper turned blogger turned sassy screenwriter named Diablo Cody, who penned "Juno."

Critics had reached for rarely used superlatives to describe Day-Lewis' portrayal of oilman Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood." They called it masterful, ferocious, electrifying, thrilling and stunning, and now they can add Oscar-winning to the list.

Day-Lewis, who won an Academy Award for the 1989 film "My Left Foot," also was nominated for 1993's "In the Name of the Father" and 2002's "Gangs of New York."

The son of a poet laureate, son-in-law of a playwright and husband to writer-director Rebecca Miller, the 50-year-old London native is known for elegant, gracious acceptance speeches and he did not disappoint last night at the Kodak Theatre.

Day-Lewis bowed to presenter Helen Mirren, winner for "The Queen" last year, and said, "That's the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood, so thank you."

Fathers and sons have been much on his mind, and he accepted the statue in honor of his grandfather, father and three sons and saluted both director Paul Thomas Anderson and young actor Dillon Freasier, who played his son in the movie.

"You've truly rocked my life. Thank you so much to Picturehouse for your passion, members of the Academy, thank you so, so much," Cotillard, who seemed to be shaking while speaking in accented English, said of her Best Actress Oscar for "La Vie en Rose."

"Thank you life, thank you love. It is true there are some angels in this city."

Although Julie Christie was the early front-runner, support for Cotillard surged as voters, critics and moviegoers caught up with her portrayal of Edith Piaf. Cotillard, 32, became only the fifth person in the history of the Oscars to win an Academy Award for using a spoken language other than English.

Her triumph in Hollywood came days after taking home France's Cesar award. "I'm totally overwhelmed with joy and sparkles and fireworks," she told the press backstage, slowly, in English. "Everything that goes bomb, bomb, bomb!"

The French beauty went deep into the Piaf character, having her eyebrows and 2 inches of her hairline shaved and seeming to shrink to Piaf's 4 feet 8 inches. To great applause in the press room, she even sang lyrics to "Padam Padam," her favorite Piaf song.

"My aim was to understand her, her heart, her soul. I went as deep as I could. I wanted to do my best to find her inside me, but it was not so hard because I love her," she said.

It was a night of emotional thanks, acknowledgements and even a birthday greeting.

"Happy birthday, man," Swinton said, gazing at her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for "Michael Clayton." She plans to give her golden boy to her American agent, who is the spitting image of Oscar.

"Really, truly, the same shape head and, it has to be said, the buttocks," she said. "There's no way I would be in America ... if it wasn't for him."

Swinton, a first-time nominee, won for playing Karen Crowder, a corporate attorney who crumples under the pressure of a new, high-profile job and a $3 billion lawsuit that may well be lost. Her character's desperation in the legal thriller leads to perspiration rings and murderous intent.

The 47-year-old Londoner, who dyed her red hair brown and packed on a few pounds, said director-writer Tony Gilroy "walks on water" and then turned her attention to famous prankster and co-star George Clooney. Yes, it was payback time.

"The seriousness and the dedication to your art, seeing you climb into that rubber Batsuit from 'Batman & Robin,' the one with the nipples, every morning under your costume, on the set, off the set, hanging upside down at lunch. You rock, man. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Backstage, Swinton said, "I'm so stoked as they say. It's fantastic, astonishing -- amazing that I'm still standing. Not complaining, it's great."

Asked why Europeans were cleaning up with acting awards, the surprisingly funny Swinton said, "Dude, Hollywood is built on Europeans. ... I'm just really sad I couldn't give the speech in Gaelic. If I could have, I would."

When Cotillard won, she said, "Fantastic! You see what I said about Europe," adding, "I guess it's in the gene pool."

As expected, Bardem took the first acting honor of the night, winning the Supporting Actor Oscar for "No Country for Old Men." He thanked the Coens "for being crazy enough to think that I could do that and put one of the most horrible haircuts in history over my head."

In "No Country," Bardem was the face of evil ... and of the movie. The 38-year-old native of Spain's Canary Islands had all the best lines and quirks as the seemingly indestructible psychopath Anton Chigurh, on the trail of $2 million in drug money.

In 2001, many moviegoers asked "Javier who?" when he was nominated for "Before Night Falls." He was the least well-known of the contenders (he lost to Russell Crowe of "Gladiator") but he was this year's sure thing, and he dedicated his win to his mother, addressing her in Spanish as she watched from the front row.

Brad Bird, who picked up the Animated Feature Oscar for "Ratatouille," gave a backhanded compliment to a figure from his past.

"I want to thank the Academy. I also want to thank my junior-high guidance counselor for a meeting we had where he asked me, 'What do you want to do with your life?' and I said, 'I want to make movies.' "

The counselor then asked what else he wanted to do with his life, and Bird repeated, "Make movies." After more exchanges about what Bird would do if he couldn't make movies, if movies didn't exist, the aspiring animator said he would have to invent them.

"I only realized just recently that he gave me the perfect training for the movie business," said Bird.

This was his second Oscar, after "The Incredibles." In the press room, he told reporters the second win is "no less sweet. Every time you make a movie, you're just hoping to get it out in time, it makes sense, and other people like it."

Like a birthday celebrant who enjoys looking through old photo albums, Oscar took note of his 80th with a clips package that paid tribute to John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Reeve, George Burns, Jane Fonda accepting the Oscar for her ailing father, Henry, and the streaker who famously jogged behind David Niven. And, in the album version of the big glasses and bad hair days, a snippet of the Snow White-Rob Lowe duet.

As Clooney said in introducing the collection and talking about the show, "The one thing that has always been consistent, it's unpredictable."

In fact, that was borne out by the first award of the night which went to "Elizabeth: The Golden Age." Many observers thought Keira Knightley's glorious green dress would factor into a costume win for "Atonement," but that didn't happen. However, Dario Marianelli's score for "Atonement" won later in the night.

In other early announcements, "La Vie en Rose" won for makeup, "The Golden Compass" for visual effects and "Sweeney Todd" for art direction. "The Mozart of Pickpockets" was named winner in the live action short category, while "Peter & the Wolf" took animated short.

"The Bourne Ultimatum" took both the sound editing and mixing awards, which meant Kevin O'Connell, nominated for "Transformers," is now 0-for-20. The Matt Damon action picture also won for film editing, and "There Will Be Blood" was honored for cinematography.

"The Counterfeiters" won for foreign language film and "Once," the charming Irish movie about a pair of musicians, won for song called "Falling Slowly," beating a trio of Disney nominees from "Enchanted."

"This is amazing. What are we doing here? This is mad," red-haired Glen Hansard said, standing next to "Once" co-winner Marketa Irglova. "We made this film two years ago, we shot on two Handycams, it took us three weeks to make, we made it for $100,000, we never thought we'd come into a room and be in front of you people. ... Make art! Make art!"

After winning, Hansard got a text message from U2 frontman Bono, which he said was like "getting praise from the high chieftan of our country." The text said "A busker that wins the Oscars -- that's the poetry."

In his monologue, host Jon Stewart addressed "this year's slate of Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies" and asked, "Does this town need a hug? What happened? ... Thank God for teen pregnancy."

He didn't ignore the just-settled writers' strike, repeating the conventional wisdom that the looming Oscars helped to end the work stoppage. In his wide-ranging opening, he skipped from Diablo Cody, the stripper turned blogger turned Oscar-nominated screenwriter, to the lackluster response of Iraq movies to the presidential election.

However, a satellite hookup to Baghdad allowed soldiers to announce "Freeheld" as the winner of documentary short.

Other Oscar snapshots:

• Production designer Robert Boyle received an Honorary Oscar "in recognition of one of cinema's great careers in art direction." Boyle has been nominated four times for art direction for "North by Northwest," "Gaily, Gaily," "Fiddler on the Roof" and "The Shootist."

• Reclusive actor Day-Lewis summed up his emotions on the red carpet: "I'm feeling a bit like a British rail sandwich," referring to the traditional bad meal served on English trains. He seemed overwhelmed and sincerely happy to see familiar British journalists in the crowd. And no, he wasn't drinking anyone's milkshake.

• It might seem counter intuitive to wear red on the red carpet but those gowns, including the ones worn by Katherine Heigl, Anne Hathaway, Helen Mirren and Miley Cyrus, popped. Julian Schnabel, director of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," was notable for what he wasn't wearing -- his trademark pajamas, traded for a tuxedo.

Clooney showed up with girlfriend Sarah Larson and proved why he's old-school Hollywood by making time to greet the fans, batting away ridiculous rumors with good humor and name-dropping "Notre Dame" to preshow host and uber fan Regis Philbin. Inside, Jack Nicholson greeted the talk-show host with, "How's the Rege tonight?"

• Oscar Day weather was not exactly from "The Day After Tomorrow" playbook but it was far from ideal. It was breezy, in the low 50s with partly cloudy or rainy skies obscured by the plastic tenting over the arrivals area. It felt like a giant greenhouse, and the hot lights under the plastic produced a smell like the one when you leave your iron sizzling on the ironing board.

• Viggo Mortensen, a lead actor nominee for "Eastern Promises," appears to be growing a beard for "The Road," the big-screen adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy best-seller that will start shooting soon in Western Pennsylvania. Michael K. Williams, late of "The Wire," will join him, the Associated Press reports.

• Seth Rogen, who has been in Pittsburgh making the Kevin Smith movie "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," presented the sound editing award with Jonah Hill. They had been introduced as Halle Berry and Dame Judi Dench, which they stretched into some laughs ... and then some more.

• Talk about your superdelegates. Although there is no way of knowing if everyone voted, or how, there were 5,829 eligible Oscar voters.