After it took him 7 years to release his sophomore film, Capote, for which he was nominated for a directing Oscar, it wouldn't have been surprising to discover that Bennett Miller had no follow-up planned. Maybe he would become another one of those filmmakers who take a long time between projects. Personally, I was hoping that he'd go and do another documentary, a la The Cruise. Maybe this time he could follow his friend Sarah Vowell around on a historical vacation of some sort.

Well, he didn't have anything up and running immediately following the Oscars, but now he is about to get started on developing The Immortalist (which he will direct off a script by Dante Miller), a drama that Miller says is, "not a science fiction film, but a drama set in the very real world of those pursuing biological immortality. It's a pursuit that attracts some extremely brilliant, wealthy and influential people; it also attracts tragic figures. The story follows one such person on his disturbing foray into it." Paramount Vantage has already picked up the rights to U.S. distribution.

[via MovieWeb]

Last week, Newsweek guessed at who the Oscar nominees for Best Director would be, gathered the five men they chose together, and let them loose. The resulting two hour conversation touched on topics from politics to the cost of making movies; from Oscar ad campaigns to The Facts of Life* and is worth a read, if only because it's rare to get so many talented, prominent people in a room together. Oh, the five directors? George Clooney, Ang Lee, Paul Haggis, Steven Spielberg, and Bennett Miller. So yeah, it was a pretty good guess.

*A bit of utterly bizarre Oscar trivia: Paul Haggis was a writer for The Facts of Life when George Clooney was on the show. I wonder how much money you could have won from of the pair of them by betting that two decades later, they'd be nominated for the best director Oscar - in the SAME FREAKING YEAR.

Like virtually every other awards panel this winter, the Directors Guild of America yesterday named Ang Lee best director for Brokeback Mountain, his obscure film about gay cowboys (who yes, we know, aren't technically cowboys). As Erik pointed out when he revealed the nominees for the award, the Academy and the DGA almost always agree on this category: in the 57 years both awards have been handed out, on only six occasions have their honorees differed. This announcement, then, is sad news for Lee's fellow nominees, Bennett Miller, Paul Haggis, George Clooney and Steven Spielberg, the one surprise in the bunch.

Interestingly, one of the six exceptions to the DGA-Oscars rule involved Lee: in 2001, the DGA honored him for his direction of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but the Academy preferred Traffic, and named Steven Soderbergh their best director.