Scorsese finally joins the Oscar club

"Could you double-check the envelope?" Scorsese quipped after silencing a raucous standing ovation of whistling, whooping academy members.

"I'm so moved," he said, accepting the directing prize. "So many people over the years have been wishing this for me. Strangers — I go into doctors' offices, elevators, I go for an X-ray — they say, 'You should win one.' "

Forest Whitaker won the Oscar for best actor for his performance as the cunning, seductive and savage Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland."

"Receiving this honor tells me that it's possible," Whitaker said. "It is possible. For a kid from East Texas, raised in South Central L.A., and Carson, who believes in dreams, who believes them in his heart — to touch them and have them happen."

Helen Mirren was named best actress for her performance as a traditional monarch in a modern world in "The Queen,"

"For 50 years or more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle," Mirren said. "I salute her courage and her consistency, and I thank her, for if it wasn't for her, I most certainly would not be here."

"Pan's Labyrinth," Guillermo Del Toro's magical-realist fantasy set in 1944 Fascist Spain, received Oscars for cinematography, art direction and makeup at the 79th Academy Awards Sunday, but fell short of its ultimate prize, best foreign-language film, which went to "The Lives of Others," from Germany.

Jennifer Hudson, the "American Idol" reject-turned-star of "Dreamgirls," was named best supporting actress, giving two of the four acting awards to African-Americans. And Alan Arkin, the cranky, heroin-snorting grandfather in the bittersweet family comedy "Little Miss Sunshine," won best supporting actor.

"Little Miss Sunshine" also won for its original screenplay by Michael Arndt, a former assistant to Matthew Broderick who had to wait seven years for his script to be produced. "When I was a kid my family drove 500 miles in a van with a broken clutch," he said, explaining the source of his inspiration. "It ended up being one of the funnest things we did together."

On a night in which several top awards came as no surprise, "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary featuring Al Gore on global warming, won best documentary feature.

"I made this movie for my children," said the director, Davis Guggenheim, his arm on Gore's shoulder. "We were moved to act by this man."

Gore took his moment in the worldwide spotlight to underline the film's message. "My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis," he said, adding that the "will to act" was a renewable resource. "Let's renew it," he said.

The film also won for best original song, for "I Need to Wake Up," by Melissa Etheridge, upsetting "Dreamgirls," which had three songs in contention. Holding her Oscar aloft backstage, Etheridge quipped that it would be "the only naked man who will ever be in my bedroom."

In a twist, "The Lives of Others," which examined the Orwellian police state that was East Germany, won in something of an upset. The German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, thanked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California "for teaching me that the words 'I can't' should be stricken from my vocabulary."

The awards for Del Toro's movie came on a night in which his and two other films by Mexican directors were up for a total of 16 honors. One of them, "Babel," won for its original score by Gustavo Santaolalla – who also won last year for "Brokeback Mountain."

"Happy Feet" was named the year's best animated feature.

Accepting for best supporting actor, Arkin said that "Little Miss Sunshine" was about "innocence, growth and connection." His voice cracking, he praised his fellow actors, saying that acting was a "team sport." He added, "I can't work at all unless I feel the spirit of unity around me."

William Monahan won best adapted screenplay for "The Departed," his transplantation of the movie "Infernal Affairs" from Hong Kong to South Boston.

An Oscar also went to Thelma Schoonmaker, the longtime editor to Martin Scorsese, who directed "The Departed." She saluted Scorsese for being "tumultuous, passionate, funny" as a collaborator. "It's like being in the best film school in the world," she said.

"Dreamgirls," nominated for eight awards, the most of any film, also won for sound mixing. But Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," whose three nominations were caught up in the tempest caused by the director's drunken, anti-Semitic rant last summer, was shut out.

Ellen DeGeneres made her first appearance as the host of the movie industry's annual celebration of itself, on a night expected to have its share of pregnant moments. Three filmmaking titans — Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola — presentedthe award for best director.

DeGeneres said it had been a lifelong dream of hers to be host for the Oscars, rather than to win one. "Let that be a lesson to you kids out there: Aim lower," she said, sounding a theme for the evening's opening, which was designed to honor the many nominees, 177 in all, rather than focusing on the winners.

DeGeneres repeatedly ventured into the audience, at one point getting Steven Spielberg to take a picture of her with Clint Eastwood, "for MySpace."

And in a choice full of irony for industry insiders, Tom Cruise, who was thrown off the Paramount lot last summer by Viacom's chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, gave the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Sherry Lansing, the former Paramount chairwoman who retired during a shake-up by Redstone two years earlier.

Backstage, Lansing said she had not known that Cruise was going to give her the award. "I saw him at an Oscar party a few days before, and he was sort of cold to me," she said. Onstage, she said, he had whispered in her ear: "This is an honor. I really wanted to do this, you know how much I love you." Lansing said she believed Cruise, who had a rough year before taking over management of United Artists, would be back to pick up an Oscar for directing or producing within five years.

Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer, received an honorary Oscar from Eastwood, who starred in the spaghetti westerns for which Morricone provided the unmistakable music.

The program began with a bouncy montage, directed by Errol Morris, of interview snippets with nominees reciting, among other things, the number of times they had come close to winning an Oscar. "Zilch," said Peter O'Toole, of the number of times he had won.

Will Ferrell and Jack Black, leading members of Hollywood's comedy rat pack, did a song-and-dance number bemoaning the paucity of comedic talent among the Oscar nominees. "I guess you don't like laughter," Ferrell sang. "A comedian at the Oscars is the saddest, bitterest, alcoholic clown."

John C. Reilly, a past Oscar nominee, then stood up in the audience to remind them — in song — that he had been in both "Boogie and Talladega Nights." All three then crooned that they hoped to go home with Helen Mirren, a best-actress nominee, who is in her 60s.

Breaking with tradition, the show's producer, Laura Ziskin, best known for the "Spider-Man" franchise, rejiggered the lineup of awards to leave the marquee categories — best actor, actress, director and picture — for the end of the night. The first half of the show was front-loaded with technical and craft categories: art direction, makeup, sound editing and mixing, costume design and visual effects.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" won for visual effects; "Letters From Iwo Jima" took sound editing; "Marie Antoinette" picked up costume design.

The director Ari Sandel won best live-action short film for "West Bank Story," a spoof on "West Side Story" with feuding Palestinian and Israeli falafel stands. "This is a movie about peace and about hope," Sandel said. "To get this award shows that there are so many out there who also support that notion."

The award for animated short went to "The Danish Poet," written and directed by Torill Kove.

Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, a nominee for best actor ("Blood Diamond"), announced in the middle of the telecast that the program had offset its carbon emissions by buying energy credits. "This show has officially gone green," DiCaprio said.

The Oscars adopted other conservation measures this year, such as using recycled paper for the Oscar ballots. "We have a long way to go, but all of us, in our lives, can do something to make a difference," Gore said.

But Gore did not throw his hat in the ring, as the producers of his film, among others in Hollywood, had hoped he might. Asked if he had a major announcement to make, Gore said: "With a billion people watching, it's as good a time as any. So my fellow Americans, I'm going to take this opportunity, here and now, to formally announce" — and the Oscars orchestra, right on cue, drowned him out as if he had droned on a second too long.

The Academy Awards capped a season in which the conventional wisdom has often been wrong, and actual wisdom has been in short supply. The big question before the nominations was how many Oscars "Dreamgirls" might win, and what film could compete with it for best picture. The only question after the nominations was, What happened to "Dreamgirls"?

Many theories were advanced, including misguided marketing and an abundance of hype, but the film's director, Bill Condon, cut to the chase: "Maybe the Academy saw five films they liked better." Whatever the reason, the film's elimination left the race wide open to an array of films that took very different routes to the nomination.

"The Departed" rode a wave of box-office success and a plan to keep Oscar hype on the down-low, partly because many in the industry felt it was time to recognize the director Martin Scorsese's lifetime of excellence. "Little Miss Sunshine," a new take on the family road-trip movie, which won four Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, was a film that no one in Hollywood seemed to want to make, but it connected with audiences to the tune of more than $94 million in worldwide box-office receipts. "Babel," by contrast, left United States audiences cold while doing good business abroad, but connected with critics and was rewarded for a global, ambitious story by winning best dramatic feature at the Golden Globes.

"The Queen," a small movie that managed to do everything right, managed to ride one of the year's more remarkable performances — Mirren as a traditional monarch in a very modern world — to broad critical recognition. And after "Flags of Our Fathers," another would-be Oscar hopeful, met with indifference, Eastwood and his studio, Warner Brothers, decided to release the film's twin, "Letters From Iwo Jima," before year's end — and were rewarded with a best-picture nomination.

This appeared to be the most ethnically and linguistically diverse batch of film nominees yet, appropriate enough given that Hollywood's foreign revenues now eclipse the domestic take by a significant margin. The Oscar slate included several films shot largely in languages other than English, most notably Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima," in Japanese, and Gibson's "Apocalypto," in Maya dialects.

"Babel," from the Mexican director Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu, spanned three continents and five languages — Japanese, Berber, Spanish, English and sign — and two of its actresses, Rinko Kikuchi of Japan and Adriana Barraza of Mexico, received nominations. (Three films by Mexican directors were up for a total of 16 honors.)

Other actors nominated include three British stars, Judi Dench for "Notes on a Scandal," Kate Winslet for "Little Children" and Mirren for her title role in "The Queen"; Djimon Hounsou, a native of Benin, for "Blood Diamond"; and Pen?lope Cruz, of Spain, for "Volver."

DeGeneres said she spotted a few Americans, too. "Of course, I'm talking about the seat fillers," she said.

Apart from the good-natured kidding about a possible presidential run by Gore, politics was far from Hollywood's mind, judging not only from the best-picture field, but from the nominated screenplays. Four of the five adapted screenplays — "Notes on a Scandal," "Children of Men," "Little Children" and "The Departed" — dealt with families, neighborhoods and society in turmoil. (The fifth, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," seemed intent on creating its own social turmoil.)

Instead the nominees for best-foreign-language film grappled with political themes from their native soils: "Days of Glory" ("Indig?nes") looked at the plight of Algerians who fought for France in World War II; "The Lives of Others" zeroed in on East Germany; "Water" depicted an 8-year-old widow relegated by Indian tradition to a living death; and "Pan's Labyrinth" grappled both magically and realistically with Fascist Spain through the eyes of a girl.

There seemed to be little suspense in several top categories. Heavy favorites included Forest Whitaker, for his portrayal of the ruthless dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland"; Mirren for her starring role in "The Queen"; the long-suffering Scorsese for directing "The Departed"; Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth"; and the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," with Gore delivering a wake-up call about global warming. The International Herald Tribune