No Country for Old Men won the Best Picture Oscar at the 80th Annual Academy Awards function.

Denzel Washington (a previous Oscar winner) presented the Best Picture award.

Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood were the other movies vieing for the big honor.

Daniel Day-Lewis won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in There Will be Blood.

Helen Mirren (who won the Best Actress Award Last year) presented the Best Actor Oscar at the 80th Annual Academy Awards function Sunday.

George Clooney (Michael Clayton), Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah) and Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises) were the other contenders for Best Actor Oscar.

Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Oscar Sunday for her performance in the French movie La Vie En Rose.

Forrest Whitaker presented the Best Actress Oscar.

“I am speechless now…It is true that there are some angels in this city,” Cotillard said after receiving her first Oscar.

Other contenders for the Best Actress Award were Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age), Julie Christie (Get Away from Here), Laura Linney (The Savages) and Ellen Page (Juno).

Action thriller Bourne Ultimatum won the Oscar for Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing at the 80th Annual Academy Awards.

Tilda Swinton won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar Sunday for Michael Clayton.

In Michael Clayton, Tilda Swinton turned in an an amazing performance as the relentless and ruthless General Counsel Karen Crowder of the agriculture conglomerate U North.

Spanish actor Javier Bardem won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for No Country for Old Men.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street won the Oscar for Art Direction at the 80th Annual Academy Awards.

One of the finest movies we’ve seen, Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp is a work of genius.

Other contenders for the Art Direction Oscar were American Gangster, Atonement, The Golden Compass and There Will Be Blood.

Alexandra Byrne, costume designer for Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age won the first Oscar at the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles Sunday evening for Best Costume Design.

Alexandra Byrne was also the costume designer for Shekhar Kapur’s previous movie Elizabeth.

Watching George Clooney on screen after seeing our Bollywood bozos like Ajith, Vijay, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Priyanka Chopra et al prance around like hippopotamuses in heat in movie after movie is like the sight of water to a lost traveler in the vastness of the merciless Sahara.

“Do I look like I am negotiating,” Clooney yells at Tilda Swinton, who as the General Counsel of a large corporation has unsuccessfully tried to have him killed. The confrontation between these two strong characters towards the end is one of the highlights of Michael Clayton.

We missed Michael Clayton at the theaters and finally got around to watching it on our cable “On Demand” service ($4.99) last night, just in time for the Oscars this evening. While we would have liked to watch Michael Clayton in high definition, the HD version was not available and we settled for the standard definition version.

Directed masterfully by Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton excels at many levels - story, acting, tight script and intense attention to detail.

Besides the gripping and complex story, there’s flawless acting by the talented ensemble of George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack. These are thoroughbreds so unlike most of our effete Bollywood stars.

By the way, Tilda Swinton won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar Sunday, February 24, 2008 for Michael Clayton.

While we have seen George Clooney in several movies, this was our first look at Tilda Swinton. And we were impressed.

To start with, Michael Clayton is the gripping story about the movie’s eponymous fixer Michael Clayton (George Clooney) in a New York City law firm, who handles unusual (some of it unethical) tasks for wealthy clients of his firm.

The movie starts with Clooney leaving a gambling den and getting into his gleaming black Mercedes to meet a rich client of his firm involved in a hit-and-run incident.

On the drive back, Clooney stops by the roadside and walk up a small hill to admire some horses. As he stands on the hill near the horses, his car explodes into a fiery ball of flames. Clooney rushes to the car and throws his wallet and some personal possessions into the car.

The movie then goes into flashback, four days earlier when Clooney is asked by his firm to fix things after his law firm colleague and friend Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) drops his clothes and runs naked into a parking lot in the midst of a deposition involving a $3 billion class action suit against his firm’s client, an agriculture giant U North.

While the main story centers around Michael’s work to salvage the ugly situation created by his friend Arthur, the movie also makes some short side-trips (mostly related, a few unrelated) like Michael’s gambling, his relationship with his young son, Arthur’s collusion with the plaintiffs and disturbing peeks into U North general counsel Karen Crowder’s (Tilda Swanton) relentless and ruthless efforts to get things under control.

Since we believe art imitates life and vice versa, it’s sad and depressing to see that there are no limits to the ugly and predatory behavior of large corporations.

We’ve watched Clooney in several movies - Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, Syriana (Clooney won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Good German and now Michael Clayton - and find him an accomplished artist.

Tis true that Clooney is not in the league of Hollywod legends like Marlon Brando, Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson but then few can lay claim to such talent. To watch Brando in On the Waterfront, Streetcar Named Desire or Godfather or Al Pacino in Scarface or Serpico or Jack Nicholson in Chinatown is to rejoice at the majesty of their performances on the screen.

Michael Clayton’s script is tightly written with nary a loose end and an object lesson to our clownish directors in Bollywood and Kollywood.

Michael Clayton left us with the depressing thought of the leapyears that Bollywood has to traverse before it can claim its place under the sun.

Tata Consultancy Services has won a multi-year contract to provide IT services to ailing U.S. car company Chrysler.

The value of the deal was not disclosed.

TCS will provide application maintenance and support services to Chrysler.

TCS said the IT services contract would include functional areas within Chrysler such as sales and marketing and shared services.

For over six years, we stood steadfast in our determination not to join the hordes who fell under the sway of Apple’s iPod music player.

Launched in October 2001, the iPod has achieved iconic status in the U.S.

It’s everywhere - in the subway, in the bus and in the mall. Apple claims to have sold 140 million units so far.

Despite several tries, Microsoft has made nary an impact in this space. Its latest attempt - Zune - has failed to gain traction.

The iPod comes in four flavors - iPod Classic, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle and the iPod Touch with Wi-Fi capabilities. The Shuffle is the entry-level product and cannot play videos.

Even as the iPod became the darling of the literatti, the gliteratti and even the hoi polloi, we held our ground. We told ourselves that we were above Continue Reading…

At the U.S. box office, the Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai combo has proven to be a lesser draw than the Shahrukh Khan-Deepika Padukone duo.

According to U.S. box office numbers, Jodhaa Akbar came in at No-19 with a weekend gross collection of $1.3 million although it was a four-day weekend because of the President’s Day holiday on Monday. UTV distributed Jodhaa Akbar.

When Om Shanti Om was released in November last year, it came in at No-11 with a weekend gross collection of $1.76 million. Eros Entertainment distributed Om Shanti Om.