1.  Steven Soderbergh, nominated as best director for both Traffic and Erin Brockovich, won for the former.

2.  He is among the best directors in the world and among the most in demand.

3.  Among the best directors he knew, John Huston and Vincente Minnelli, shared that assessment.

4.  Although those films won eight Academy Awards, none were for best director.

5.  An Oscar tradition seems to be that each year, a movie must be nominated for best picture without its director being nominated for best director.

6.  And can you name the five Hitchcock films for which he was nominated as best director and lost?

7.  And its director, Ang Lee, earned a nomination for best director.

8.  And we closed out the century without a single American woman ever being nominated for best director.

9.  And their emotional force shows that if Arabs did not invent melodrama, their best directors have deified it as a genre.

10.  And the winner of the Tony for best director of a musical is ... prerecorded.