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

What Can Kathryn Bigelow Do Next?

As big of a fan of The Hurt Locker that I am, it puzzles me how quickly people are appointing her as one of our great directors.  She showed off her great skill this past year crafting a heart pounding action picture, but it hasn't been until now that she has received such critical acclaim.  Her earlier films have been mostly neglected as simply action flicks, a claim that could also be levied against The Hurt Locker.  Until now Point Break has been her most notable movie, an entertaining movie but the action genre had better examples in the 90's.  Bigelow is also notable for one of the bigger decades larger bombs in K-19, a film headlined by Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.  Strange Days was a film also evenly divided by critics, Roger Ebert gave it four stars but many other critics note that it falls short of fleshing out its ideas.  I don't want to rag on her as a director, she takes more risks as a director than many of her male counterparts.  Yes, I'm looking at you Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich.  However, I don't think we need to elevate her to auteur status either.