Look up director in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Director may refer to:

Arts[link]

• Director (band), an Irish rock band from Malahide
• Film director
• Music director
• Music video director, a film director that specializes in supervising the filming and editing of music videos
• Sports director, an individual at a television or radio station who is in charge of the sports department
• Technical director, the most senior technical person within a theatrical company or television studio
• Television director, a person who directs the activities involved in making a television episode
• Theatre director
• Opera director
• Creative director, a person usually responsible for creative development of Interactive Entertainment, and is generally regarded as the prime design authority across the company's product range.

Business[link]

• A member of a board of directors, a group of managers of a company
• Director-general
• Executive director
• Finance director, or chief financial officer
• Funeral director, someone involved in the business of funeral rites
• Managing director
• Non-executive director
• Director (business) may also be the title of a mid-level management position

Works[link]

• Director (album), an album by Avant
• The Director (film), an Australian film
• The Director, a novel by Henry Denker

Other[link]

• Director (colonial), head of chartered company's colonial administration in a territory
• Director (education), head of a university or other educational body
• Director (military), a device that continuously calculates firing data
• Tournament director, for sporting events
• Adobe Director, multimedia authoring software
• Director string, a way of tracking free variables in computation.
• Director, the spatial and temporal average of the orientation of the long molecular axis within a small volume element of liquid crystal
• The Director, a complex artificial intelligence system used in Left 4 Dead
• HMS Director (1784)
• Director telephone system, or "Director exchange"
• Osama bin Laden, one of whose nicknames is "The Director"
• Aaron Director, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School
• Fibre Channel director, a large switch for computer storage networks

See also[link]

• Deputy Director (disambiguation)
• Directeur sportif

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Anna Kendrick
Kendrick at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	(1985-08-09) August 9, 1985 (age 26) Portland, Maine, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1998–present
Partner	Edgar Wright (2009–present)

Anna Kendrick (born August 9, 1985) is an American actress. She rose to fame after her performance as Natalie Keener in Up in the Air, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her other work includes The Twilight Saga, Camp, Rocket Science, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 50/50, and the Broadway musical High Society.

Career[link]

Kendrick "caught the [acting] bug" at the age of 10, when she caught a bus from Portland, Maine, to New York City so that she could attend auditions.^[1] Kendrick's first acting role was as Dinah in the Broadway musical High Society in August 1998 when she was 12 years old, a performance for which she earned Theatre World Award, Drama Desk Award, and Tony Award nominations,^[2] making her the third-youngest Tony Award nominee.^[3]

Kendrick went on to appear in a number of other theater productions, including the musical A Little Night Music, before making her film debut in the 2003 musical comedy Camp,^[2] for which she was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category at the 2004 Chlotrudis Awards and Best Debut Performance Independent Spirit Award for her portrayal of Fritzi Wagner.

In 2007, she appeared in her next film, Rocket Science, in which she portrayed Ginny Ryerson, a fast-talking high school debater. Although she says she found the role intimidating and challenging after watching an actual national collegiate championship debate, her performance was praised by critics^[2] and she was nominated for a 2007 Independent Spirit Award in the category of Best Supporting Actress.^[4]

In late 2007, she auditioned for the role of Jessica Stanley in Twilight, a 2008 film adapted from the first book of the novel series by Stephenie Meyer.^[5] She had intended to do a mix-and-match audition with various actors, but was too ill and had to leave; she was, however, brought in for a later session where she was given the role.^[1] Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg said that the characters Jessica Stanley and Lauren Mallory from the book were combined to create the role.^[6] Kendrick reprised her role as Jessica in the Twilight sequel, New Moon.^[7]

Kendrick's theater singing experience gave her the opportunity to star in her next project, 2009's The Marc Pease Experience, where she appears opposite Jason Schwartzman and Ben Stiller as a high school senior involved in musical theater.^[2][8]

She appeared in the 2009 films Elsewhere, in which she plays her first lead character, a girl whose best friend (played by Tania Raymonde) goes missing,^[2] and in director Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, based on Walter Kirn's 2001 novel of the same name, alongside George Clooney and Vera Farmiga.^[9] For her role in Up in the Air, the National Board of Review named her Best Supporting Actress^[10] and she has also picked up nominations from numerous critics awards and The Golden Globes^[11] and The Screen Actors Guild^[12] and the Academy Awards.

Kendrick at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2010

She reprised her role as Jessica Stanley in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg devised a graduation speech for her character that was not part of the novel.^[13] She appeared in Edgar Wright's adaptation of the graphic novel Scott Pilgrim, titled Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.^[14] Kendrick played Stacey Pilgrim, the sister of the lead character.

In 2010, Kendrick appeared in LCD Soundsystem's music video "Pow Pow" as a "shape-shifter" who collects "the souls of wicked men".^[15] In October 2010, she attended the 2010 Top Glamour Awards in Mexico where she won for "Best International Actress".^{[citation needed]}

In 2011, she starred in the dramatic comedy 50/50, alongside Joseph Gordon Levitt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Seth Rogen. She also reprised her role as Jessica Stanley in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.

In 2012, she plays the part of Rosie in the screen adaptation of the consummate baby guide, What To Expect When You're Expecting.

It has been reported that in 2012 she will star opposite John Francis Daley in Rapturepalooza,^[16] that she has been cast in The Archivist,^[17] to be directed by Robin Wright, and that she will voice a character in the stop-motion animated feature, ParaNorman.^[18] She also will star in Pitch Perfect, where she plays a rebellious and goth-like college student who discovers her voice in her school’s female a cappella group and in a political thriller called The Company You Keep starring Shia LaBeouf.

Personal life[link]

Kendrick was born in Portland, Maine, the daughter of Janice, an accountant, and William Kendrick, a history teacher.^[19] Kendrick and her older brother, actor Michael Cooke Kendrick, who appeared in the 2000 film Looking for an Echo, both attended Longfellow Elementary School, Lincoln Middle School and Deering High School in Portland.^[20]

As of 2009^[update], she is in a relationship with director Edgar Wright, whom she met during the production of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.^[21][22]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Anna Kendrick

• Anna Kendrick at the Internet Movie Database
• Anna Kendrick at the Internet Broadway Database

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Ang Lee 李安
Ang Lee, 2009
Chinese name	李安 (Traditional)
Chinese name	李安 (Simplified)
Pinyin	Lǐ Ān (Mandarin)
Born	(1954-10-23) October 23, 1954 (age 57) Chaochou, Pingtung, Taiwan
Years active	1992 – present
Spouse(s)	Jane Lin (1983–)
Children	Haan Lee (b.1984) Mason Lee (b.1990)
Awards Hong Kong Film Awards Best Director 2001 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Golden Bauhinia Awards Best Director 2001 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Golden Horse Awards Best Film 1993 The Wedding Banquet 2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Best Director 1993 The Wedding Banquet 2007 Lust, Caution Best Original Screenplay 1993 The Wedding Banquet

Ang Lee (Chinese: 李安; Pinyin: Lǐ Ān; born October 23, 1954) is a Taiwanese-American film director.^[1] Lee has directed a diverse set of films such as Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), Hulk (2003), and Brokeback Mountain (2005), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director. He is the first person of Asian descent to win the Best Director Oscar.

Early life[link]

Education[link]

Ang Lee was born in the town of Chaochou in Pingtung,^[2] a southern agricultural county in Taiwan. He grew up in a household that put heavy emphasis on education and the Chinese classics. Both of Lee's parents moved to Taiwan from China following the Chinese Nationalists' defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Lee's father, a native of Jiangxi Province in southern China, imbued his children with studying Chinese culture and art, especially calligraphy.

Lee studied in the National Tainan First Senior High School where his father was the principal. He was expected to pass the annual Joint College/University Entrance Examination, the only route to a university education in Taiwan. But after failing the Exam twice, to the disappointment of his father, he entered a three-year college, National Arts School (now reorganized and expanded as National Taiwan University of Arts) and graduated in 1975. His father had wanted him to become a professor, but he had become interested in drama and the arts at college. This early frustration set his career on the path of performance art. Seeing Ingmar Bergman's film The Virgin Spring (1960) was a formative experience for him.^[3]

After finishing the Republic of China's mandatory military service, Lee went to the U.S. in 1979 to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he completed his bachelor's degree in theater in 1980. Thereupon, he enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, where he received his MFA. He was a classmate of Spike Lee and worked on the crew of his thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

During graduate school, Lee finished a 16mm short film, Shades of the Lake (1982), which won the Best Drama Award in Short Film in Taiwan. His own thesis work, a 43-minute drama, Fine Line (1984), won NYU's Wasserman Award for Outstanding Direction and was later selected for the Public Broadcasting Service.

Life after graduation[link]

Lee's NYU thesis drew attention from the William Morris Agency, the famous talent and literary agency that later represented Lee. At first, though, WMA found Lee few opportunities, and Lee remained unemployed for six years. During this time, he was a full-time house-husband, while his wife Jane Lin (Chinese: 林惠嘉; pinyin: Lín Huìjiā), a molecular biologist, was the sole breadwinner for the family of four. This arrangement, usually an embarrassment in Taiwanese culture, put enormous pressure on the couple, but with Lin's support and understanding, Lee did not abandon his career in films but continued to generate new ideas from movies and performances. He also wrote several screenplays during this time.^{[5][citation needed]}

In 1990, Lee submitted two screenplays, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet, to a competition sponsored by the Republic of China's Government Information Office, and they came in first and second respectively. The winning screenplays brought Lee to the attention of Li-Kong Hsu (Chinese: 徐立功; pinyin: Xú Lìgōng), a recently promoted senior manager in a major studio who had strong interests in Lee's unique style and freshness. Hsu, a first-time producer, invited Lee to direct Pushing Hands, a full-length feature that debuted in 1991.

Career[link]

In the 2007 book The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen, Whitney Crothers Dilley has analyzed in detail the striking diversity of Lee's films, as well as Lee's recurring themes of alienation, marginalization, and repression.^[6] Many of Lee's films, particularly his early Chinese trilogy, have also focused on the interactions between modernity and tradition. Some of his films have also had a light-hearted comic tone which marks a break from the tragic historical realism which characterized Taiwanese filmmaking after the end of the martial law period in 1987. While The Wedding Banquet (1993) became a break-out hit for Lee as the most proportionately profitable film of 1993, it was Sense and Sensibility (1995) that brought Lee his first true international acclaim. Following that, both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) (nominated for Academy Award for Best Director) and Brokeback Mountain (2005) (which won the Academy Award for Best Director) became cultural touchstones, sweeping awards ceremonies and, in the case of Brokeback Mountain, sparking intense critical debates. When asked by a TV interviewer how he found his films, Lee is said to have replied: "I don't find my films, my films find me."

Lee's film Brokeback Mountain (2005) won the Golden Lion (best film) award at the Venice International Film Festival and was named 2005's best film by the Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and London film critics. It also won best picture at the 2005 Broadcast Film Critics Association, Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America (Adapted Screenplay), Producers Guild of America and the Independent Spirit Awards as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, with Lee winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Brokeback also won Best Film and Best Director at the 2006 British Academy Awards (BAFTA). In January 2006, Brokeback scored a leading eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, which Lee won. He is the first Asian and non-Caucasian director to do so.

In 2007, Lee's film Lust, Caution earned him a second Golden Lion.

Debut from Taiwan[link]

Pushing Hands (1992) was a success in Taiwan both among critics and at the box office. It received eight nominations in the Golden Horse Film Festival, Taiwan's premier film festival. Inspired by the success, Hsu collaborated with Lee in their second film, The Wedding Banquet (1993), which won the Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival^[7] and was nominated as the Best Foreign Language Film in both the Golden Globe and the Academy Awards. In all, this film collected eleven Taiwanese and international awards and made Lee a rising star.

Lee's first two movies were based on stories of Chinese Americans, and both were filmed in the US. In 1995, Hsu invited Lee to return to Taiwan to make Eat Drink Man Woman, a film that depicts traditional values, modern relationships, and family conflicts in Taipei. The film was once again a box office hit and was critically acclaimed. For a second consecutive year, Lee's film received the Best Foreign Language Film nomination in both the Golden Globe and Academy Awards, as well as in the British Academy Award. Eat Drink Man Woman won five awards in Taiwan and internationally, including the Best Director from Independent Spirit. Hollywood optioned the film rights and remade it into Tortilla Soup (2001, dir. María Ripoll). This is one of the rare occasions in which a Taiwanese film was remade outside the country.

Arrival in Hollywood[link]

[edit] Sense and Sensibility

Lee's three acclaimed first dramas opened the door to Hollywood for him. In 1995, Lee directed Columbia TriStar's British classic Sense and Sensibility. The switch from Taiwanese to British films did not prevent Lee's work from garnering awards: Sense and Sensibility made Lee a second-time winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. It was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, and won Best Adapted Screenplay for screenwriter Emma Thompson, who also starred in the movie alongside Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet. Sense and Sensibility also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama.

After this, Lee directed two more Hollywood movies: The Ice Storm (1997), a drama set in 1970s suburban America, and Ride with the Devil, an American Civil War drama (1999). Although the critics still highly praised these latter two films, their box office was not impressive, and for a time this interrupted Lee's unbroken popularity – from both general audiences and arthouse aficionados – since his first full-length movie. However, in the late 1990s and 2000s, The Ice Storm has had high VHS and DVD sales and rentals and repeated screenings on cable television, which has increased the film's popularity among audiences.

1999 onward[link]

[edit] Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

In 1999, Li-Kong Hsu, Lee's old partner and supporter, invited him to make a movie based on the traditional Chinese “wuxia” (martial arts and chivalry) genre. Excited about the opportunity to fulfill his childhood dream, Lee assembled a team from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). The film was a surprising success worldwide. With Chinese dialogue and English subtitles, the film became the highest grossing foreign film in many countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Director at the Academy Awards. It ended up winning Best Foreign Language Film and three technical awards. The success of Crouching Tiger demonstrated that Lee's artistry had a general appeal; it also inspired such established directors as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige to explore wuxia films for Western audiences.

[edit] Hulk

In 2003, Lee returned to Hollywood to direct Hulk, his first big-budget movie. The film received mixed reviews and became a moderate success, grossing over $245 million at the box office. After the setback, Lee considered retiring early, but his father encouraged him to continue making movies.

[edit] Brokeback Mountain

Lee decided to take on a small-budget, low-profile independent film based on Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-finalist short story, Brokeback Mountain. In a 2005 article^{[dead link]} by Robert K. Elder, Lee was quoted as saying, "What do I know about gay ranch hands in Wyoming?" In spite of the director's removal from the subject at hand, Brokeback Mountain showcased Lee's skills in probing depths of the human heart. The 2005 movie about the forbidden love between two Wyoming sheepherders immediately caught public attention and became a cultural phenomenon, initiating intense debates and becoming a box office hit.

The film was critically acclaimed at major international film festivals and won Lee numerous Best Director and Best Picture awards worldwide. Brokeback Mountain was the most acclaimed film of 2005, winning 71 awards and an additional 52 nominations. It was declared Best Picture by such organizations as the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the Independent Spirit Awards, the 2005 Biennale Venice Film Festival, and the Producers Guild of America. Ang Lee also received his second Best Director award from the Directors Guild of America. Brokeback Mountain was nominated for a leading eight Oscars and was the front runner for Best Picture heading into the March 5 ceremony, but lost out to Crash, a story about race relations in Los Angeles, in a controversial upset. There was some speculation that Brokeback Mountain's homosexual theme was the reason for that upset. Lee said he was disappointed that his film did not win Best Picture,^[8] but was honored to win an Academy Award for Best Director, becoming the first person of Asian heritage and the first non-white to ever win the award.

[edit] Lust, Caution

After Brokeback Mountain, Lee returned to a Chinese topic. His next film was Lust, Caution, which was adapted from a short novel by the Chinese author Eileen Chang. The story was written in 1950, and was loosely based on an actual event that took place in 1939–1940 in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China, during World War II. Similar to Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee adapted and expanded a short, simple story into a feature film in a way that allows individual figures to develop sophisticated layers of reserved emotions, without being sidetracked by complicated plots or overstuffed material.

Lust, Caution is distributed by Focus Features and premiered at international film festivals in the summer and early fall of 2007. In the US, the movie received a NC-17 rating (no one 17 and under admitted) from the MPAA mainly due to several strongly explicit sex scenes. This was a challenge to the film's distribution because many theater chains in the United States refuse to show NC-17 films. The director and film studio have decided not to appeal the decision. In order to be permitted to show Lust, Caution in mainland China, however, Lee removed 9 minutes from the film to make the content suitable for minor audiences.^[9]

Lust, Caution captured the Golden Lion from the 2007 Biennale Venice Film Festival, making Lee the winner of the highest prize for the second time in three years. The critics in the United States, however, were not all positive. When Lust, Caution was played in Lee's native Taiwan in its original full-length edition, it was very well received. Staying in Taiwan to promote the film and to participate in a traditional Chinese holiday, Lee got emotional when he found that his work was widely applauded by fellow Taiwanese. Lee admitted that he had low expectations for this film from the U.S. audience since "its pace, its film language – it's all very Chinese."^[10]

Lee has been chosen as president of the jury for the 2009 edition of the Venice Film Festival, set to take place from September 2 to 12, 2009.^[11]

Collaborations with James Schamus[link]

Ang Lee has had a career-long collaboration with producer and screenwriter James Schamus.^[12]

Schamus produced or co-produced the following Ang Lee movies:

Schamus co-wrote the following Ang Lee movies:

Personal life[link]

Lee lives in Larchmont, New York with his wife Jane Lin, a microbiologist, whom he married in 1983. They have two sons, Haan Lee (born 1984), and Mason Lee(born 1990).^[13] Lee is a naturalized U.S. citizen.^{[14][15][16][17][18]}

Filmography[link]

Lee has been involved in the process of filmmaking in various capacities, though the highlight of his career and legacy is his directorial work. The following are Lee's various credits.

As Director:

See also: Films directed by Ang Lee

As Writer:

• Pushing Hands (1992)
• The Wedding Banquet (1993)
• Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
• Siao Yu (1995)

As Actor:

• The Wedding Banquet (1993)
• Hulk (2003)
• Hollywood Chinese (2007) – himself

As Editor:

• Pushing Hands (1992)
• Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

As Producer:

• Siao Yu (1995)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Accolades[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Dilley, Whitney Crothers. The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen. London: Wallflower Press, 2007.
• "Taking Stock of 'Taking Woodstock'" Rushprnews October 5, 2008
• "Ang Lee's movie has a backstory of pure serendipity" by Dan Bloom, Taipei Times. October 11, 2008

• Cheshire, Ellen. Ang Lee. London: Pocket Essentials, 2001.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ang Lee

• Ang Lee at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Ang Lee^{[dead link]} (Chinese)
• Ang Lee 64th Venice Film Festival press conference
• DGA Quarterly interview