The 84th Academy Awards: Best Director

Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris (2011) - (Oscar O-Meter: 3/5)

Woody Allen was born December 1, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York. As a young boy he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.

He broke into show business at age 15 when he started writing jokes for a local paper, receiving $200 a week. He later moved on to write jokes for talk shows but felt that his jokes were being wasted. His agents, Charles Joffe and Jack Rollins, convinced him to start doing stand-up and telling his own jokes. Reluctantly he agreed and, although he initially performed with such fear of the audience that he would cover his ears when they applauded his jokes, he eventually became very successful at stand-up.

After performing on stage for a few years, he was approached to write a script for Warren Beatty to star in: "What's New Pussycat?" and would also have a moderate role as a character in the film. As production was ongoing for the film, Woody gave himself more and better lines and left Beatty with less compelling dialogue. Beatty inevitably quit the project and was replaced by Peter Sellers, who demanded all the best lines and screen time. It was from this experience that Woody realized that he could not work on a film without complete control over its production.

Woody's theoretical directorial debut was in "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"; a Japanese spy flick that he dubbed over with his own comedic dialogue about spies searching for the secret recipe for egg salad. His real directorial debut came the next year in the mockumentary "Take the Money and Run." He has written, directed and, more often than not, starred in about a film a year ever since while simultaneously writing more than a dozen plays and several books of comedy.

While best known for his romantic comedies Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), Woody has made many transitions in his films throughout the years, transitioning from his "early, funny ones" of "Bananas," "Love and Death" and "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask;" to his more storied and romantic comedies of "Annie Hall," "Manhattan" and "Hannah and Her Sisters;" to the Bergman-esque films of "Stardust Memories" and "Interiors;" and then on to the more recent, but varied works of "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Husbands and Wives," "Mighty Aphrodite," "Celebrity" and "Deconstructing Harry;" and finally to his film of the last decade, which vary from the light comedy of "Scoop," to the self-destructive darkness of "Match Point" and, most recently, to the cinematically beautiful tale of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

Although his stories and style have changed over the years, he is regarded as one of the best filmmakers of our time because of his views on art and his mastery of filmmaking.

Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist (2011) - (Oscar O-Meter: 5/5)

Michel Hazanavicius was born and raised in Paris, France. His grandparents were originally from Lithuania, but relocated to France in the 1920s. Hazanavicius attended art school, and moved on to work as a director for commercials and television projects. In 1999, he wrote and directed his first feature film Mes amis (1999), which featured his brother Serge Hazanavicius. His next feature film, spy parody, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006) was a success at the French box office, and warranted a sequel, OSS 117: Lost in Rio (2009), which was also a hit. Hazanavicius came to the attention of international audiences with the release of an almost wordless film, The Artist (2011), which starred his wife, Bérénice Bejo and OSS 117 star Jean Dujardin. The film was a critical and popular hit, garnering many major nominations and awards.

Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life (2011) - (Oscar O-Meter: 4/5)

Terrence Malick, one of the more singular filmmakers produced by America, was born on November 30, 1943 in Ottawa, Illinois. His family subsequently lived in Oklahoma and he went to school in Austin, Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965.

A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, he attended Magdalen College, Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, but did not finish his thesis on Martin Heidegger, allegedly because of a disagreement with his adviser. Returning to the States, he taught philosophy at M.I.T. and published a translation of Heidegger's "Vom Wesen des Grundes" as "The Essence of Reasons".

Malick did not get his PhD in philosophy: Instead, he attended the American Film Institute Conservatory in its inaugural year (1969), taking a Masters of Fine Arts degree in film making. His masters thesis was the 17-minute comedy short Lanton Mills (1969), which starred Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton. Malick himself acted in the short, a tradition he has maintained throughout his career, appearing in many of his films in cameos.

At AFI, Malick made a lasting association with Jack Fisk, who would establish himself as an Oscar-nominated art director and production designer and serve as art director on four of his seven films. He also picked up Mike Medavoy as an agent, who got Malick work doctoring scripts and marketed his originals. He wrote the screenplay for the 1972 Alan Arkin trucker movie Deadhead Miles (1972), which was many miles from Harvard let along Oxford, and for the 1972 Paul Newman-Lee Marvin contemporary oater Pocket Money (1972), another departure from fields of academia. "Deadhead Miles" was dumped by Paramount as unreleasable and "Pocket Money", despite being headlined by two Top Ten Box Office stars, flopped.

Alexander Payne for The Descendants (2011) - (Oscar O-Meter: 3/5)

Director, producer and screenwriter Alexander Payne was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Of Greek descent (the family name was changed from Papadopoulos), his parents George and Peggy ran a Greek restaurant. He has two older brothers. 

Alexander attended Stanford University, where he majored in Spanish and History. He then went on to study film at UCLA Film School. His university thesis film was screened at the Sundance film festival, which led to him being backed by Miramax to write and direct Citizen Ruth (1996). Payne prefers to have control over his movies, from scripts to cast.

Martin Scorsese for Hugo (2011) - (Oscar O-Meter: 5/5)

After serious deliberations about entering the priesthood - he entered a seminary in 1956 - Martin Scorsese opted to channel his passions into film. He graduated from NYU as a film major in 1964. Catching the eye of producer Roger Corman with his 1960s student films (including co-editing Woodstock (1970)), Scorsese directed the gritty exploiter Boxcar Bertha (1972). Mean Streets (1973) followed in 1973 and provided the benchmarks for the Scorsese style: New York settings, loners struggling with inner demons, pointed-shoes rock-meets-opera soundtracks and unrelenting cathartic violence. "Mean Streets" also featured Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, two actors who would help shape that style. After Scorsese directed Ellen Burstyn to a Best Actress Oscar in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), the trio was reunited for the dark journey of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976). The film achieved additional notoriety five years after its release when Bickle's (De Niro) concern for a teenaged hooker played by Jodie Foster inspired John Hinckley's assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. 

After New York, New York (1977) (which one critic described as a wife-abuse musical) and The Last Waltz (1978), Scorsese released Raging Bull (1980) dedicated to his mentor Haig Manoogian. The biography of middleweight fighter Jake LaMotta earned two Oscars (Actor - DeNiro, Editing - Thelma Schoonmaker) and was later selected as the best film of the decade by U.S. critic gods Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Scorsese then explored fans as pariah (The King of Comedy (1983)), dark-comic dreams (After Hours (1985)), and revisited pool shark Eddie Felson from The Hustler (1961) ( The Color of Money (1986) with Paul Newman). Scorsese outraged some religious groups by attempting to portray a human son of God in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) before returning to more familiar territory with the Mafia in Goodfellas (1990). He followed with two films which were remakes, Cape Fear (1991) and The Age of Innocence (1993). Besides directing and co-writing, Scorsese has also acted. It's interesting to note he played the gunman at the finale of Mean Streets (1973) and the cab passenger planning to kill his wife in Taxi Driver (1976). He also had a role in Dreams (1990).