The last scattered bits of 2009 Oscar news are petering out over the Atlantic. The Guardian has Mike Leigh's Oscar week diary: Leigh, whose Happy-Go-Lucky star, Sally Hawkins, was robbed of the Best Actress nomination she was widely assumed to have coming her way, but Leigh himself somehow managed to nab a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. (This is typical of the Academy's sense of humor, since Leigh is known to develop his movies out of improvisational sessions with his cast and used to take a pass on giving himself official writing credits until he moved from television to theatrical-release films and the unions got involved.) Leigh reports that his Los Angeles cab driver "thinks that we're kidding when we say it's got only one nomination", but not because he thought that the movie deserved better: Travis Bickle had "never heard of Happy-Go-Lucky." A recurrent theme quickly develops. Told that Happy-Go-Lucky is "creeping up in the blogs and polls" and that "yesterday, the bookies' odds in London were 39-1", but Leigh can only shrug and confess that he's "convinced that Dustin Lance Black will win for Milk." His next day in town, he enjoys "breakfast in the patio cafe" with his sons, after which "we potter round Hollywood Boulevard with its stars on the sidewalk and its tacky gift shops - it feels familiar to my film-maker son Leo, who's just been shooting in Blackpool. The boys snap me with a plastic Oscar in a shop. We all agree that's the nearest I'll get to one." The day of the awards, his dates for breakfast are David Hare and the screenwriter Danny Strong, who "insist that my category is wide open, and I stand a good chance. Still unconvinced." Finally, Leigh, who has been nominated twice for director and a total of four times for original screenplay, insists that "At one, weird moment, some strange force suddenly convinces you that you're about to win, while you affect to look benign and generous for the camera that's suddenly in your face; then you don't win, and you spend the rest of the night trying to be grown-up and sporting. You even try to enjoy yourself." He's got the part about covering up his expectation that he might win down to a science. In the end, he claims to be happy to lose to such a deserving crowd (though he thinks Sally Hawkins got shafted) and salutes Danny Boyle as a deserving winner. Give the man credit for being a gentleman.

Boyle himself has been taking his prize on a victory lap, stopping off at "St Mary's Social Club in Radcliffe, Bury, where his family and supporters watched the ceremony", and which Boyle was good enough to give a shout-out to in his Oscar speech. Boyle has already been around to the establish, which his father used to run--"He used to get up and sing, 'Oh Danny Boyle', which was pretty embarrassing when you're 11 years old."--to show off his Golden Globe and his Bafta, and by now you'd think that the locals might be getting a little tired of the sight of him bursting in yelling, "Hey! Look what I got!" But apparently Radcliffe is a tolerant place, and everyone seemed tickled that he'd pulled off a trifecta. Now the local council is considering him for "the honour of Freeman of the Borough of Bury," which comes with fries.