Ethan (L) and Joel Coen (C) accept the Oscar for best directing for No Country for Old Men from director Martin Scorsese at the 80th annual Academy Awards, February 24, 2008. (Photo: Reuters)

The best picture Academy Award went to No Country for Old Men, which is the biggest winner at Sunday night's Academy Awards show.

The modern-day Western No Country for Old Men also won Academy Awards for best supporting actor for Javier Bardem, best director and adapted screenplay for the brother team of Ethan and Joel Coen.

The Coen brothers became instant Oscar favorites last month when they won top honors from the Directors Guild of America (DGA). Only six times since 1949 has the DGA winner not gone on to win the Oscar.

No Country for Old Men, which went into the night with eight nominations, out-dueled its chief rival There Will Be Blood, which also had eight nods. Other best-picture nominees were Juno, Michael Clayton and Atonement.

"So many people have a part of this, chief among them Cormac McCarthy, who wrote a wonderful book that it was an honor to make into a movie," said Scott Rudin, producer of No Country for Old Men.

Accepting the best-director award, Joel Coen said he and his brother have been making movies since they were kids.

"In the late sixties, when Ethan was 11 or 12, we got a suit and briefcase and we went to the Minneapolis International Airport with a Super 8 camera and made a movie about shuttle diplomacy called Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go. Honestly what we do now doesn't feel that much different from what we were doing then.

"We're really thrilled to have received it (the directing Oscar) and we're very thankful to all of you out there for letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox."

The Coen brothers beat out directors Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton), Jason Reitman (Juno) and Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

It was the first directing Oscar for the Coens. Joel Coen was nominated for directing the 1996 film Fargo.

This was the third time two credited directors were nominated for the same film, following Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, who won Oscars for the 1961 musical West Side Story, and Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, nominees for the 1978 comedy Heaven Can Wait.

(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2008)