"Ang Lee astonishes," exclaimed film critic Stanley Kauffmann in a New Republic review of the Taiwanese-born director's 2000 hit, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. "The still-early career of this director would be incredible except the films exist." In less than a decade Lee has established himself as one of the world's brightest film directors. Among an already impressive list of directing credits are the films Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, and Eat Drink Man Woman, as well as his acclaimed adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel Sense and Sensibility, his dissection of 1970s suburbia in The Ice Storm, his Civil War-era Ride with the Devil, and his major box-office score: the choreographed martial-arts historical melodrama Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Lee approaches filmmaking with a sense of balance and an interest in domestic drama that, in the opinion of some reviewers, too many directors lack and which the director himself once...