Ultimately, it became clear that the night's big winner was No Country for Old Men, which picked up Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Director, and finally Picture. That gave the Coen brothers a total of three statues each; their acceptance speeches were polite but unexciting, and almost took on a dutiful tone by the time they won Best Director: "Honestly, what we do now doesn't feel that much different from what we were doing then," Joel said of their long history of filmmaking dating back to their childhood.

The night in general was low-key and pleasant, thanks to the wide array of films that were given awards and their as-yet moderate box office (Juno is the only one to break $100 million). The downside of that, of course, is the atrocious ratings that these types of years always provide: the night was down 21% from last year and was the lowest on record in at least twenty years. (The highest-rated Oscars are always when a Big Movie dominates everything, like Titanic and The Return of the King.) That's a shame, and another indication that the general public doesn't like to bother with challenging, great movies: most critics agree that this was one of the strongest list of films in a long time.

Stewart nearly touched on this during an early joke about an Eddie Murphy box office hit: "Even Norbit got a nomination, which I think is great. Too often the Academy ignores movies that aren't good."