Poster Concept by Drew Struzan; All Photos Courtesy Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences

The best speech of last night's Academy Awards almost missed its telecast. As Once star Glen Hansard, accepting the Oscar for Best Original Song, repeated as mantra, "Make art; make art," the music cue flooded in, and Hansard's film peer Marketa Irglova was cut short from expressions of her thanks. It's a common enough occurrence at the always long-running ceremony, and perhaps the whole affair would have gone unnoticed, that is, had the show's producers not, in an unprecedented move, brought Irglova back on stage.

"Hope at the end of the day connects us all," she said, eloquently thanking fellow independent musicians and all artists who believe their dreams are difficult to reach. With her message of optimism and support, Irglova sealed into being the cross-over potential of Indywood into Hollywood trappings. Made in 17 days for just $100,000, the Sundance darling Once charmed its way into the box office and later the Academy with the sheer love and creativity with which it was made. As Irglova exited, an amused Jon Stewart retold a backstage snapshot of the pair that went something like this: Hansard said to Irglova, "We should make our Oscars kiss."/ "They're both men," she replied./ To which Hansard answered: "It's okay. It's Hollywood."

The fact that the show producers made time for Irglova to come back out coupled with Stewart's kind-hearted storytelling may mark a definitive shift in Academy Award focus. With little exception, this year belonged not to the studios but to speciality divisions including Focus Features, Paramount Vantage and Fox Searchlight, all which supported auteur directors like the Coen brothers, P.T. Anderson and Julian Schnabel, among others. With No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Juno all in the Best Picture category, the air was thick with independently envisioned creations, the marks of each film pointing directly to their directors, writers and actors. And, this year strikingly, the respect afforded the classical creative underdogs, the so-dubbed "little guys" often working on middle ground budgets, was quite high.

Following two years of lackluster hosting--Jon Stewart crash and burning with his New York cynicism in 2006, and Ellen DeGeneres inspiring merely a desire to spring clean 2007, last night's 80th anniversary ceremony, written by returning host Stewart and his team on a strike compressed schedule, hit a refreshing success speed with many well-timed jokes, appropriate flourishes of optimism and thankfully, a short running time at a mere three hours and twenty minutes.

Checking his uneasiness and comical, at times biting, political edge at the door, Stewart presided over the ceremony with an unpretentious polish and generosity, his jokes landing innocuously where and when they needed to. "Does this town need a hug?" he asked, referencing the stream of nominations for films and actors playing with morally dark material. "Thank God for teen pregnancy...They needed that kind of light-hearted affair."

Noticeably unmoved by Stewart's Anton Chigurh jokes, curmudgeon Tommy Lee Jones sat behind No Country for Old Men peer and soon-to-be Best Supporting Actor recipient Javier Bardem, gracing the crowd with only a slight smile when Stewart jumped on a series of "stay the course" jokes, all references to Jones' nominated performance in flopped Iraq narrative The Valley of Elah. As if anticipating another ideological face-off with Stewart, one lived out in 2006 with his realist but still optimistic Oscar speech, George Clooney looked no more thrilled, and in fact seemed to steel himself, when Stewart's jokes turned toward Michael Clayton. Dancing deftly out of any terribly polarizing or controversial territory, however, Stewart lightly quipped his way around celebrity culture and through his thoughts on the coming election, ending with this note on the historically watershed Democratic ticket of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama: "Historically when you see a black man or a white woman as president an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty." Laughs from Spike Lee sounded out as the awards portion began.

Achievement in Costume Design, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Alexandra Byrne

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year, Ratatouille, Brad Bird

Achievement in Makeup, La Vie en Rose, Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald

Achievement in Visual Effects, The Golden Compass, Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood

Achievement in Art Direction, Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, art director Dante Ferretti, set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo/

Typical for the ceremonies, multiple montages belabored the flow, but using the trope as a comic riff, Stewart shared a few ridiculous montages that would have been without an end to the writer's strike. "Thank God we didn't have to show that," he joked, a sly meta-twist. It would have been quite nice though had the full Best Picture retrospective and the inane recap interviews with past winners also "not been shown", but this time without the benefit of the meta-twist.

Best Live Action Short Film, Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets), Philippe Pollet-Villard

Best Animated Short Film, Peter & the Wolf, Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman

Wearing perhaps the least flattering dress of the night, one calling to mind--oh, a cape, Tilda Swinton visibly blanched when presenter Alan Arkin called her to stage for the Best Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar for Michael Clayton. Affable and flattered, Swinton eased her way through a thanks to her American agent and to Clooney, who smiled broadly as she spoke to his professionalism and talent. In stark contrast, Josh Brolin and James McAvoy would follow shortly after to present the Coen Bros. with the award for Adapted Screenplay for No Country For Old Men. Disappointing and awkward are the best words to describe the joint speech, Ethan literally boiling his message down to a simple, oddly wary statement of thank you.

Achievement in Sound Editing, The Bourne Ultimatum, Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg

Achievement in Sound Mixing, The Bourne Ultimatum, Scott Millan, David Parker and Kirk Francis

There was a great little moment when the team of Millan, Parker and Francis went up to get their awards. Presenters Jonah Hill and Seth Rogan had been bouncing back and forth with trite dialogue about which of the two more resembled Halle Berry. Hill claimed the honor for himself, and as he backed away slowly to make room for the trio, one of the mixers said, "Would it be okay to kiss Halle Berry now?" Whether triggered by this comment or just overwhelmed by the coordination of it all, a now awkward and confused Hill just continued to back up.

Achievement in Film Editing, The Bourne Ultimatum, Christopher Rouse

Honorary Oscar, Robert Boyle, Production Designer

Best foreign Language Film of the Year, The Counterfeiters, director Stefan Ruzowitzky, producers Josef Aichholzer , Nina Bohlmann, Babette Schröder, Austria

Achievement in Cinematography, There Will Be Blood, Robert Elswit

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score), Atonement, Dario Marianelli

Best Documentary Short Subject, Freeheld, Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth

Best Documentary Feature, Taxi to the Dark Side, Alex Gibney and Eva Orner

The night wrapped up on bet pools of the near confirmed:

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

Achievement in Directing, No Country for Old Men, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Best Motion Picture of the Year, No Country for Old Men, Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

In his closing statements to the audience, Joel Coen would put one thing nicely, talking about how as children he and Ethan made a super-8 short called Henry Kissinger Man on the Go. "Honestly, what we are doing now doesn't feel so much different from what we were doing then." Happy with their Oscars, but not necessarily focused on earning them, the Coens will just keep doing what they're doing.

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