Others movies that had been in the running had been Darren Aronofsky for ballet-themed drama Black Swan, Christopher Nolan for high-tech thriller Inception and David O Russell for boxing movie The Fighter.

BBC: Director Tom Hooper with his dad Richard

What we're watching: Tonight NBC rotates out Studio 60 to premiere The Black Donnellys, a drama about...well, we're really not sure.

ENGADGET: HDTV Listings for February 26, 2007 HD

"A Raisin in the Sun, " Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 drama about a black family that wants to move to a white neighborhood, doubtless came across as strongly political when it first opened on Broadway.

WSJ: Home Truths | A Raisin in the Sun | Othello | Theater Review by Terry Teachout

But in its brutal structure of white power and black penury, apartheid also contained visceral drama, stories of humanity willing and waiting to break out in a demotic exuberance which in his township work Mr Fugard caught so well.

ECONOMIST: At 81, Peter Brook turns to Africa to keep himself young

The novel will probably start as a drama and end up as a black comedy.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Jotham Annan, a black actor cast as Horatio, has just graduated from drama school and oozes youthful energy, while Samantha Whittaker, playing Ophelia, is still studying for a degree.

ECONOMIST: Trevor Nunn finds a new Shakespearean star

Rouch meets with white colonial French high-school students and their black African classmates (all nonactors) as he persuades them to improvise a drama about efforts to bring the two mutually wary groups together socially.

NEWYORKER: The Human Pyramid