Yes, Yes - oh YESSSS! Never Mind the British: the Women are Coming

How fitting that the first Academy Award for Best Director to be won by a woman should be awarded within a few hours of International Women's Day. It's a headline writer's dream.

It's also a reminder that winners don't have to be blockbusters. True, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is a war film. But it is also an intimate portrait of characters under huge tension, because of outside forces - and their relationships with each other. The moment where the black soldier (Anthony Mackie) calls the white one (Jeremy Renner) "a white trash redneck" sets the movie apart from war films which are only about, well, war. It also serves as a neat metaphor for a challenge to the status quo. Way to go, Kathryn - and fellow Oscar winner, screenwriter Mark Boal. On which note, let's just check how many women have won for Best Screenplay....