The Eighties teen heart-throb Corey Haim has died, aged 38.

Farrah Fawcett was intentionally left out of the "in memoriam" segment at Sunday’s Oscars, organisers have admitted.

Alice in Wonderland has smashed Avatar’s record as the most successful opening weekend for a 3D film.

Britons were in contention for sixteen Oscars on Sunday night but won only two — for sound mixing and costume design. On the face of it the 2010 Academy Awards were a sobering comedown after the heroics of 2009 when Kate Winslet won a Best Actress Oscar with her sixth nomination and Slumdog Millionaire won eight including Best Film and Best Director for Danny Boyle. However, on a night of few surprises, there was ample evidence of Hollywood’s love affair with British talent and, in Carey Mulligan, a bona fide new world star.

The Hurt Locker was a slow-burning fuse that ignited imaginations and this year’s Oscar nominations, ending in a big bang that changed Hollywood for ever. On Sunday night, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman in the 82 years of the awards to win Best Director — for a resolutely masculine war movie. Bigelow had barely finished her thanks when she was back on stage with both hands full, clutching a second gold statuette for Best Picture.

This is like an obstacle course!” booms a voice from behind me. Then: “Hang on, I just need to climb over this . . . dah . . . oof!” A heavy, pointy metal object almost cracks me in the back of the head. I turn around, and there’s Sandra Bullock, Oscar statue in hand, almost falling headlong over a lighting cable as she pushes her way through a mass of tuxedos in search of her chauffeured S-Class Mercedes.

Best Film

There were only two British winners at the Oscars. One was Ray Beckett, a sound editor on The Hurt Locker, the other was Sandy Powell, one of the most esteemed costume designers working in film. As Carey Mulligan and Colin Firth sparkled as valiantly as possible in defeat, the lesser known Powell won for the sumptuous period threads of The Young Victoria. Not for her a dreary sheath in “nude” or silver to parade. To accept the award she took to the podium in something of many colours and typically unique, a glittery black beret wedged to the side of her head. Like many of the designs that have made her name, “period with a twist” probably best summed it up.

BEST PICTURE: The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker shocked and awed the Academy this year, not merely taking Best Picture, but Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow. Yet the Iraq bomb-disposal thriller deservedly won the race with more of a slow drip than a big bang. The small-budget film rose from nowhere through word-of-mouth, the internet and worshipful reviews and Bigelow’s stature slowly grew with it. Avatar, it turned out, was a vast blue 3D firework that fizzled out too early.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)

Kathryn Bigelow last night made Oscar history when she was named Best Director for The Hurt Locker, the first woman to be crowned the queen of Hollywood in the 82-year history of the Academy Awards.

21.03 (05.03GMT): So it’s all over — 30 minutes too late. Wrapping up the show, Steve Martin announces: “Ladies and gentleman, the show has gone on so long, Avatar now takes place in the past.”

Ask anybody on the street which actors starred in the Ocean’s movies, and they’ll tell you it was George and Brad,” shrugs Matt Damon, playing down the stats with which I have just tried to wow him. Stats that say that, in the past decade, his films made $3 billion worldwide, compared with George Clooney$’s meagre $2.3 billion and Brad Pitt$’s tabloid-headline-assisted $3.5 billion. Damon should like stats $— he played the maths god Will Hunting, after all — but he looks nonplussed. “I’m ‘support’ in Ocean’s. As I was in Saving Private Ryan — Tom [Hanks] carried that movie. You could accuse me of piggybacking on other people’s brilliance more than anything.”

This time last year Jeremy Renner was hurting — hurting badly. It had been almost two decades since he’d moved from the California cowtown of Modesto to Los Angeles, and while the actor had managed to snag a handful of interesting but minor roles — in 28 Weeks Later, for example — he’d failed to make it any farther. Worse, his last gig of note had been in a low-budget Iraq war film, generally considered an act of career suicide. It didn’t help that the on-location shoot in Jordan had been a bloody debacle, culminating in a week-long production shutdown. Indeed, on his return to LA, Renner seemed to have read his own last rites as a leading man, even accepting a role in that most humiliating of movie-star downgrades: a television cop show. It would be cancelled after only ten episodes.

Mr Big v Ms Bigelow

Two days before the coronation of America’s movie stars, dozens of lackeys are shifting huge cardboard cut-outs of the actors and directors (no one else counts for the cameras) from seat to seat in the Kodak Theatre to get the mix and hierarchy just right. Feuds, fame and beauty must all be precisely balanced. There is not merely a nation but the world looking on, 90 million of them in front of their tellies with a bowl of Cheesy Wotsits, waiting for fashion faux-pas and unscripted blubbing.

A regal demand comes from the corridor: “Off with his head!” Helena Bonham Carter demands. The Red Queen in her partner Tim Burton’s movie, Alice in Wonderland, is clearly a role hard to shake. However, when, decapitation of the offending underling presumably complete, she returns to her suite in the Dorchester, she insists that it is her two-year-old daughter, Nelly, who is the real despot. “The Red Queen is definitely inspired a bit by my toddler,” she says. “Orders, orders, all the time. No pleases. No thank yous. Totally selfish. No empathy.”