Sixth spot goes to one of this year's Oscar favorites, Tom Hooper for The King's Speech. A lot less showy than some of the other top directorial efforts this year, we admired Hooper's deft hand with his actors and the way he turned what could have easily been a filmed play into a visually interesting story. It's a film that's literally about people talking, and we were with him all the way.

Turing a complete 180 from that is Edgar Wright in seventh spot for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Wright took what could have been a completely unfilmable graphic novel and made it into something not just coherent, but also something that entirely embodied its hyper-active subject matter. While it's still to be seen if he's really revolutionized film for the next generation, he's definitely given it a shove in a new direction.

This was definitely a year of directors taking on interesting challenges, a theme continued in our eighth place director, 127 Hours' Danny Boyle. Faced with a film that's stuck in one location for 90% of its running length, Boyle turned to numerous and inventive fantasy sequences to tell his story of a man forced to contemplate his life and his mortality. It's a film that you wonder how it could have been pulled off, but after watching Boyle's version, you wonder how it could have been done any other way.

David Russell lands in ninth place with The Fighter. While he may not be known as the most actor-friendly director (just ask George Clooney and Lily Tomlin), Russell found a way to work with this cast to produce a remarkable number of outstanding performances, including Christian Bale (mercurial himself) Melissa Leo, Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg.

Lee Unkrich wraps up our top ten list with his work on Toy Story 3. Even covering highly familiar ground, Unkrich made the world of toys sparkle one more time with its new cast of characters and its new setting, even finding room for a brilliant set piece or two.

Missing our top ten by that much were Roman Polanski for The Ghost Writer and Debra Granik for Winter's Bone, with The American's Antojn Corbin, Easy A's Will Gluck and Exit Through the Gift Shop's Banksy filling out the next group of five.

The Calvins Introduction
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Album
Best Cast
Best Character
Best Director
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Best Videogame
Breakthrough Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Picture

---

Continued:       1       2