Filmmaker Ang Lee is perhaps second-to-none, when it comes to possessing the most diverse, multi-genre and non-nationally specific filmmography. To describe Lee solely as a Chinese filmmaker would be a gross disservice, as he is a master of universal tales dictated by an empathetic heart.

Emma Thompson, screenwriter for "Sense and Sensibility" could think of no better than Lee to direct this period piece based on the English-lit classic of the same name. Lee has been described as "a cosmopolitan chameleon who seems at home in any culture, but is detached enough to see it with an ironic acuity." This kind of endorsement repeats in the other films Lee has been commissioned to craft: "The Ice Storm" (a dysfunctional, suburban family in the 70s), "Eat Drink Man Woman" (familial love and the Chinese high kitchen), "Ride with the Devil" (a romance set during the American Civil War), "The Wedding Banquet" (an interracial, gay romance and a phony marriage), "The Incredible Hulk" (a live-action adaptation of the DC Comic classic), and "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" (an ubiquitous Chinese martial arts epic centred around love and loyalty).

Adding to Lee's impressive and varying roster, and one of this year's u+a Best Film Award recipient is "Brokeback Mountain". The quietly aching tale of forbidden love between two Wyoming ranch hands in the 1960s is a classic love story - full stop. Through a simple formula of A meets B, and A+B fall in love but cannot be together, Lee slowly unveils visually and emotionally their joys, their pains, and to the audience clearly, what would make them happy. Reviewers, critics and the like may try to prescribe descriptors and hyphenations like "radical, gay-cowboy movie" to the story; however, Lee has been able to create a universal tale that transcends time, place and gender, and that is truly radical. >>