Everybody knows that Oscar is the Big Kahuna of movie awards. But Academy voters still follow other ceremonies with a scrutinizing eye. A bigger pile of trophies can only boost an Oscar contender's chances. So it's significant that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon director Ang Lee recently took home the Director's Guild of America crown, as well as honors from the Hong Kong Film Awards and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Hoping to keep the momentum going, Lee sets his sights on the AOL Moviephone Awards.Best Director: Ang Lee for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Story: A veteran swordsman (Chow Yun-Fat) and his longtime love (Michelle Yeoh) battle a female assassin (Cheng Pei-Pei) and a mysterious thief (Zhang Ziyi) for ownership of a legendary sword.
Bio: Born in Taiwan in 1954 and immigrated to the United States in 1978, Lee has received critical acclaim for his films Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.
Las Vegas Odds: 8-1
CityBeat Odds: Lee will best Steven Soderbergh's double nod.
Lee on making the type of "wuxia" movie he loved as a boy: "It's really time for me to liberate from all of that and come to fulfill my boyhood fantasies and return to my cultural roots, which are in Taiwan, and to a genre that since childhood has captured my imagination."
On his connection to filmmaking: "I think every film is personal ... I think to me they're all interpersonal relationship stories. They're dramatic pieces. The nature of production is different. The performing art is different. Some films are bigger than others. Of course, Crouching Tiger so far is the biggest."
On making a movie-movie: "I think it works as a movie. A pure movie. It's not a film. It's a movie-movie experience, and I think that's really how people look at it and talk about it. The reason I wanted to do this movie is because it's fun and emotional. That has been very rewarding, the feedback from the audience."
