And the Oscars went to:

The 79th Academy Awards ended with a bang; the whimpers came from Oscar-pool players watching a number of favorites get taken down during the long ceremony — Alan Arkin standing in the Sunshine instead of Eddie Murphy; the penguins of Happy Feet kicking the tires off Pixar's Cars; Melissa Etheridge's ''I Need to Wake Up'' putting three nominated songs from Dreamgirls to sleep. Smart-money favorites came through at the end with wins for Helen Mirren (The Queen), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), and — finally! — Martin Scorsese (The Departed). Then, the unpredictability returned with a mild surprise in a Best Picture race that had no clear-cut front-runner, as the Academy pulled the trigger once again for Scorsese's violent Boston gangster/cop tale, which led the night with four total awards. Other multiple winners included Pan's Labyrinth with three, and Little Miss Sunshine, Dreamgirls, and An Inconvenient Truth, each with two.

Best Picture - The Departed
Best Director - Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Best Actor - Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Best Actress - Helen Mirren, The Queen
Best Supporting Actor - Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Best Supporting Actress - Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Best Original Screenplay - Little Miss Sunshine
Best Adapted Screenplay - The Departed
Best Animated Film - Happy Feet
Best Foreign Language Film - The Lives of Others, Germany
Best Documentary Feature - An Inconvenient Truth
Best Original Song - ''I Need to Wake Up,'' from An Inconvenient Truth
Best Original Score - Babel
Best Cinematography - Pan's Labyrinth
Best Film Editing - The Departed
Best Art Direction - Pan's Labyrinth
Best Makeup - Pan's Labyrinth
Best Costume Design - Marie Antoinette
Best Sound Editing - Letters From Iwo Jima
Best Sound Mixing - Dreamgirls
Best Visual Effects - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Best Short, Animated - The Danish Poet
Best Short, Live Action - West Bank Story
Best Documentary Short - The Blood of Yingzhou District