Ang Lee named top director

Hollywood's directors have named Ang Lee director of the year for Brokeback Mountain.

Lee (Eat Drink Man Woman, The Wedding Banquet, Hulk) picked up the award from the Directors Guild of America (DGA), beating off George Clooney (Good Night, And Good Luck), Paul Haggis (Crash), Bennett Miller (Capote) and Steven Spielberg (Munich).

Lee is now the favourite to pick up the best director Oscar as only six times since the DGA awards started in 1949 has the winner not gone on to receive the academy award.

One of these six occasions was when Lee picked up the DGA award for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but lost out in the Oscars to Steven Soderbergh and Traffic.

The BBC TV series Rome was also recognised as Michael Apted, also the DGA president, picked up the award for best director of a drama series.

In his career Apted has directed The World Is Not Enough, Gorillas In The Mist, Enigma and Stardust and was behind the long-running Up Series documentaries.

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