The Die is Cast: Inarritu wins DGA

The Directors Guild of America has spoken, naming Alejandro G. Innaritu's Birdman the best directed film of 2014, echoing the preference of both the Producers and Screen Actors Guilds.

That's the game, right? The only movie to collect that triumvirate of awards and not win Best Picture was Apollo 13. I suppose some could argue that with Oscar voting having just opened and with well over a week before the polls close, there's enough time for a backlash to take effect. However, backlash is always more of a media reaction to the awards race, and doesn't really reflect any shifting opinions within the industry. If Birdman somehow loses Best Picture, and it might, it'll be because some other option was always more popular within the Academy the whole time, not because voters suddenly decide they dislike it on account of its awards success thus far.

I, for one, can't complain about this. Birdman is one of the year's best, and what a refreshing change of pace it'll be to see a comedy win the Academy's top honour.

But that still doesn't quite settle things in Best Director...

One Category at a Time: Documentary

Since the Academy opened up voting in Best Documentary Feature to the entire membership two years ago, the results of that change have been immediately transparent. In the past, when only the small turnout of members at official screenings could cast a ballot, the winning documentary would usually be one that tackles a "serious" subject. But with the first two winners under this new regime being relatively lightweight music docs (Searching for Sugar Man and 20 Feet from Stardom), it seems to suggest that this category will now always lean the way of populist crowdpleasers so long as every Academy member has a say.

Of course, there's no guarantee that such an audience hit is going to be nominated every single year, just as there's no guarantee that the buzziest title will be one dealing with feathery subject matter. You need look no further than this year's frontrunner for proof that doc-lovers can still flock to movies that bill themselves as Important with a capital 'I'.

'Boyhood', 'Grand Budapest' Win with Editors Guild

The American Cinema Editors handed out their hardware last night, honouring Boyhood's Sandra Adair in the drama category and The Grand Budapest Hotel's Barney Pilling in the muscial/comedy category. Both were nominated by the Academy.

I gotta say this Oscar category is still a complete mystery to me. It used to be that the winner of the ACE drama award always went on to win the Oscar, but that pattern has been bucked twice in the last three years. True, Boyhood could pull out the win on account of its "12 years of footage" narrative (a bit of an oversimplification, as it's actually only 12 weeks of footage amassed over 12 years), but the Academy usually goes for editing that... stands out. The greatest thing about Boyhood's montage is how invisibly fluent it is. I could definitely see something with a more rigourous cutting style like Whiplash or American Sniper taking it.

Elsewhere, The LEGO Movie won the animated category, adding more salt to the wound of its Oscar snub, while Citizenfour won the doc category for Mathilde Bonnefoy (who will actually get to take home her own Oscar since she's also a producer on the film).

DGA reaffirms Boyhood/Imitation Game as Oscar front-runners

The Directors Guild of America has named its five Best director nominees for 2014, and they are:

Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Clint Eastwood, American Sniper
Alejandro G. Inarritu, Birdman
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game

This has to be a good sign for the Weinstein Co. and The Imitation Game, who needed this nomination in a competitive field to still vie for the Best Picture title. I'm more confident now than ever that it will be the movie to win the whole thing in the end.

But will Tyldum himself pull a Tom Hooper and triumph in Best Director, or is there no way anyone takes this away from Richard Linklater?

As for the Oscar nominations (less than 48 hours away!), will this group repeat? I can't help but think that the smaller, more discerning directors branch of the Academy might pass over Wes Anderson's idiosyncratic comic stylings on favour of  a fringe contender. The other four, however, feel solid to me.

[UPDATE:]

And now the documentary nominees, all of which made the Oscar shortlist have been unveiled:

Dan Krauss, The Kill Team
John Maloof, Charlie Siskel, Finding Vivian Maier
Jesse Moss, The Overnighters
Laura Poitras, Citizenfour
Orlando von Einsiedel, Virunga

For all the talk of Citizenfour being the frontrunner (which it is), it's interesting to note that Finding Vivian Maier has now scored more guild mentions than any other doc this year.

'Boyhood' dominates busy day of critical kudos

There were three critics groups announcing their awards today (props to all those folks who sat at there computer for 12 hours watching the drip feed of winners on Twitter): Boston Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Online, and the LA Film Critics Association. All three of them echoed the New York Film Critics Circle's decision to name Richard Linklater's Boyhood the best film of 2014.

Linklater himself also took all three Best Director prizes, but wasn't even in a timezone where he could hear all the good news! Instead he was overseas at the British Independent Film Awards, where his critical darling won Best International Film. Talk about an eventful day!

Beyond those top two categories, the only other race which saw a unanimous winner from all three organizations was Best Documentary, which predictably went to Citizenfour. I've only seen a couple of docs this year (the other being the enjoyable if unremarkable Life Itself), so I'll have to catch up with a lot of the other contenders before deciding if all this praise for this one is justified.

After the jump I'll list the winners and runner-ups of the LAFCA with some thoughts:

Review - Citizenfour

We meet our hero holed up in the Mira Hotel, in Hong Kong. At first glance he seems an unlikely hero; Gaunt, unimposing, wearing a nervous smile that threatens to trivialize what he has to say. Until then, he was only known to documentarian Laura Poitras by his online alias, 'citizenfour'. Within a week his true moniker, Edward Snowden, would become a household name, and the revelations he brought to light in that hotel room in the summer of 2013 continue to reverberate through the public consciousness.

He is the central figure of Poitras' much-talked-about documentary Citizenfour, her first-hand account of Snowden -- then a 29 year old data analyst with the National Security Agency -- exposing the defamed intelligence service for spying on millions of Americans, and then some. His whistleblowing has since caused him to take political asylum in Russia where he remains to this day, knowing well that he would be arrested on sight should he ever again set foot in the United States.