Best Director

The Best Director category follows different trends than the acting categories, except for the notable fact that no woman has ever won the award (Kathryn Bigelow has a chance to end that this year.) Only two times has the award gone to multiple directors (The Coen Brothers for No Country For Old Men and Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story. Steven Soderbergh was nominated for twice in 2000, for Traffic and Erin Brockovich, winning for Traffic. Obviously it is important that the director's film be a favorite for Best Picture, with the two having matched just over 75 percent of the time. However, recently Oscar has shown a tendency to split the awards, with 3 times in the last decade,the most in a decade since the 50's.

Film Won Best Picture - 65 times 75%
Average Age - 44.1
Oldest Winner - Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby (74)
Youngest Winner - Norman Taurog - Skippy (32)

This year's nominees

Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker (58)
James Cameron - Avatar (55)
Lee Daniels - Precious (50)
Jason Reitman - Up in the Air (32)
Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds (46)

A split this year could certainly occur as I suspect Bigelow to take Best Director, while Avatar or perhaps Inglourious Basterds have a chance to win Best Picture. Jason Reitman seems like a threat, but even he is too young to win this award. Other than that most of these numbers really mean nothing, aside from the fact Bigelow would be the first woman to take this prize.

Director