Oscars Betting Odds: Martin Scorsese For Best Director?

It's time for our second look of the week at the Best Director Oscars betting odds, where we decide which raging paranoid egomaniac control-freak deserves to receive an award for being so insufferably bumptious to everyone all the time.

Yesterday, as usual, we took a peek at the outsiders for the Best Director Oscar - basically three men who made depressing films about death - but discount those, because chances are the Best Director Oscar will be going to one of these men who have made miserable films about death. So who'll win - the miserable young upstart of the repeatedly stiffed veteran whose best work is behind him? Ooh, it's a thrilling one alright.

So here are the Best Director Oscars betting odds - for Alejandro González Iñárritu and Martin Scorsese - with betting odds from Paddy Power…

Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel - For a relatively new director, Alejandro González Iñárritu sure has learnt how to depress the living shit out of people watching his movies in record time. After 21 Grams, we were certain that Iñárritu would have to lighten up even a little for his next film, but how wrong were we. In Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu weaves three disparate story threads together, each more wrist-slittingly bleak than the last. If Brad Pitt isn't sobbing because someone accidentally shot Cate Blanchett, then a deaf mute Japanese schoolgirl is trying to have meaningless grubby sex with father figures or a Mexican woman basically just cries all the time for nothing more than shits and giggles. To put together a film this complex and unrelentingly without hope certainly takes a skilled hand, but at times Babel can feel like cynical despondency by numbers and not a lot more. Still, everyone else loves Babel, so maybe Alejandro González Iñárritu really does have a shot at the Best Director Oscar this year. Current Best Director Oscar betting odds - 10/3 

Martin Scorsese, The Departed - Martin Scorsese has famously never won a Best Director Oscar despite being regarded as one of the finest directors in history. Taxi Driver didn't earn him an Oscar, Raging Bull didn't earn him an Oscar, um… Kundan didn't earn him an Oscar. But now Martin Scorsese is the favourite to win the Best Director Oscar for The Departed - the Infernal Affairs remake where Jack Nicholson parades around in a strap-on cock and Mark Wahlberg does a spot-on Joe Pesci impression. The Departed is certainly Scorsese's strongest chance at winning an Oscar in recent years - more so than his rubbish Howard Hughes film or the movie about Daniel Day Lewis chasing Cameron Diaz around New York in a big top hat - featuring all of Scorsese's trademark brutal velocity and an easily recognisable cast of organised criminals. And let's hope that Martin Scorsese does win the Best Director Oscar this year, because his next film about a Portuguese monk wandering around feudal Japan asking himself deep theological questions probably won't be quite as big. Current Best Director Oscar betting odds - 2/5

Tomorrow - Back to the Razzies. But if that's too long to wait - or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with - head right over to the Paddy Power Oscars betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.