No filmmaker got more best-director nominations without winning an Oscar for it than Robert Altman, who died in a Los Angeles hospital last night at 81. But in 2006, the director of MASH, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Short Cuts, The Player, and Gosford Park finally won a lifetime achievement statuette. Altman, who didn’t seem to give a damn what people thought, was an actor-loving maverick who worked around the edges of the Hollywood system, making unconventional films with sprawling casts, multiple stories, overlapping sound, and very long tracking shots spilling with information and humor. “No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have,” said the vigorous pot smoker, accepting his Oscar last year. “I’m very fortunate in my career. I’ve never had to direct a film I didn’t choose or develop.” His cause of death has not been released. (Source)