Claim: The 79th Academy Awards began at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST on ABC Network.

The 79th Academy Awards ceremony , presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -LRB- AMPAS -RRB- , honored the best films of 2006 and took place February 25 , 2007 , at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood , Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. . During the ceremony , the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Academy Awards -LRB- commonly referred to as Oscars -RRB- in 24 categories . The ceremony , televised in the United States by ABC , was produced by Laura Ziskin and directed by Louis J. Horvitz . Actress Ellen DeGeneres hosted for the first time . Two weeks earlier in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills , California held on February 10 , the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Maggie Gyllenhaal .   The Departed won four awards , including Best Picture and Best Director for Martin Scorsese . Other winners included Pan 's Labyrinth with three , An Inconvenient Truth , Dreamgirls , and Little Miss Sunshine with two , and Babel , The Blood of Yingzhou District , The Danish Poet , Happy Feet , The Last King of Scotland , Letters from Iwo Jima , The Lives of Others , Marie Antoinette , Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man 's Chest , The Queen , and West Bank Story with one . The telecast garnered nearly 40 million viewers in the United States .