'La La Land' Dances Off with DGA, 'Lion' Roars at ASC

Damien Chazelle and his La La Land directorial team took top honours from the Directors Guild of America last night, all but squashing any remaining doubt as to who this year's Academy Award Best Picture winner is going to be in three weeks.

What we can still ponder in the meantime is the extent to which it will dominate the Oscars. While many still anticipate a clean sweep, there's more than enough reason to suspect it's showing weakness in some categories. For instance, will the BAFTAs (next Sunday) and WGA Awards (the Sunday after that) imply Best Original Screenplay going to something like Manchester by the Sea, or perhaps even Hell or High Water? Will the two design categories go to period or fantasy efforts as they tend to do?

Even Best Cinematography has been thrown slightly into question after the American Society of Cinematographer's bestowed their top honour upon Greig Fraser for his beautiful work Lion, a beloved player this season that voters might feel is due a consolatory win in at least one category.

For now, there's still plenty to keep my interest up.

My Award Nominations: Director

Tomorrow the DGA will bestow its yearly honours for the year's best direction in television and film. Barring some kind of earth-shaking upset, we can expect to see Damien Chazelle and Garth Davis take home prizes for Best Director and Best First-Time Director respectively. Best Documentary Direction is a bit more up in the air, but I'm betting it'll be Ezra Edelman for O.J.

My own ballot for Best Director follows:

Directors Guild nominations

The DGA is the last industry group to speak up before tomorrow's Oscar ballot deadline, so it may be too late for it wield any influence, but its timing is possibly a very strong indicator of what our top tier Best Picture contenders are.

To nobody's surprise, Damien Chazelle (La La Land), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) and Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) all assumed their preordained spots in the DGA lineup.

Joining them are Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) and -- in what I'd only characterize as a slight surprise -- Garth Davis for his first feature Lion. Davis might not have the name recognition of Gibson, Scorsese or any of the other contenders who failed to earn a nomination today, but he does have the pull of a damn good movie; One which may have been underestimated until this past week of guild success. Logic and stats suggest that one of these two gents will be replaced on the Oscar ballot for Best Director, but which one, and by whom?

Over in the documentary category, the DGA went with O.J.: Made in America, Weiner, I Am Not Your Negro, The Eagle Huntress and Life, Animated. All five are still in the running for Oscar.

Alejandro G. Innaritu wins DGA for second straight year

When was the last time we had a season as disparate and fractured as this one?

The Big Short wins the PGA, Spotlight takes the SAG, and then last night
The Revenant's Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu swiped the Directors Guild of America's top prize for the second consecutive year. It seems as though we've arrived at the point where all bets are off for Predicting the Best Picture Oscar. Which of these three will prevail?

My Award Nominations: Supporting Actress

Another busy Saturday in awards land. The Annie awards will name their top achievements in animation (are we expecting anything other than Inside Out?), while the DGA may provide us with our strongest clue as to who's really leading this year's opaque Best Director race. If anyone other than Adam McKay wins, will we see a split on Oscar night? If it's George Miller, do we really think he can turn the same trick with AMPAS? Not to jinx it or anything, but that would be the single coolest Oscar win I've ever seen... Too cool to actually happen, I'm sure.

As for me, I'll be taking care of my acting categories this weekend. Let's get the ball rolling with Best Supporting Actress, which hasn't been this competitive in years (and that's without fraudulent leading ladies posing as supporting players).

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...

Will DGA-BAFTA Weekend Clafiry Some Tight Races?

Final Oscar balloting started today, right on the cusp of a weekend that will unveil the winners of the Directors Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television. A number of the Oscar categories still feel maddeningly close a full three weeks after they were announced, so the pending results of this weekend's kudos could be the litmus test we need.

Or they could just be a bunch of red herrings.

Take the Best Actor race, for instance:

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.

DGA nominees

With four of the Academy's five Best Director slots seemingly sewn up by Steve McQueen, Alfonso Cuaron, David O. Russell, and Paul Greengrass, the only question going into today's Directors Guild of America nominations was who would occupy that fifth slot?

Turns out to be Martin Scorsese, whose Wolf of Wall Street has now hit all the major guilds except SAG (who may have not seen it in time). Now this doesn't necessarily mean Marty is a shoe-in for a Best Director nod from the Academy, whose directors branch is much smaller -- and more prone to left-field choices -- than the DGA. But this does bode well for the film's Best Picture chances. It was looking like a contender on the bubble for a while, but it seems to have caught on with the industry.

Busy night for industry kudos with DGA, ADG, and Annie Awards

Oh what a night. Lots of precursor announcements to parse through, the biggest of which was the Director Guild of America, awarding their top prize to Ben Affleck for his Oscar hopeful Argo. At this point it can hardly be called a surprise to see Affleck picking up more hardware, especially after last weekend's PGA and SAG victories. Indeed, it could be that his Best Director "snub" by the Academy turns out to be one of the biggest deceptions in recent Oscar history, because it's looking like Argo may have been the unbeatable frontrunner all along. Time will tell.

In the documentary category, Malik Bendjelloul continued his awards season sweep for Searching for Sugar Man, likely on way to the Oscar. I liked the movie, but is it too much to ask the film industry to spread the wealth a little bit. There were other good documentaries this year, y'know.

Why and Why Not Argo?

What a bizarre and fascinating awards season it's been so far. Even before the season truly began in December, it was apparent that this would be the most tightly contested Oscar race in recent memory. But the date change for nominations added another layer of nuance onto the proceedings.

Without the benefit of the DGA's nominees to guide them, the Academy's directors branch voted with their hearts, and yielded a pair of refreshingly unexpected Best Director nominees upon which future generations are destined to look back and smile with approval. But it yielded one unfortunate omission which has now thrown the season into flux. Funny how one little "snub" can so entirely muddy the waters of Oscar prognostication.

Funny also how it can so fervently stoke the fires of debate. Across the Internet we're seeing writers and pundits making heated arguments (some coloured by more than just a little personal bias) as to why Argo will, or why Argo won't, win Best Picture in just under a month's time.

So, why Argo?

DGA doc nominees

Here they are:

Alison Klaymon, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
David France, How to Survive a Plague
Kirby Dick, The Invisible War
Lauren Greenfield, The Queen of Versailles
MalikBendjelloul, Searching for Sugar Man

This makes Sugar Man the only one to score with all the guilds that honour documentaries. It's clearly the popular favourite for the Oscar, but I'm glad to see the tragically Oscar-snubbed Queen of Versailles get a mention from the DGA.

Directors Guild nominees

The DGA has confirmed what most prognosticators have been assuming are the top five films in the hunt for Best Picture; the directors of Argo, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty were all nominated by the huge guild who often serve as a Best Picture bellwether. Mind you, that may not be the case this year since this precursor comes after the Academy's voting deadline, but it still serves as a good indication of what the industry at-large thinks.

Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow, and Steven Speilberg were all presumed safe bets for DGA nods. The only suspense (minor, at that) came in anticipating whom of Ang Lee, Tom Hooper, Quentin Tarantino, or David O. Russell would take the other two. So Les Mis fans can breathe a sigh of relief [phew!!!], as Hooper's nomination shores up the musical's hopes of actually winning Best Picture, but this doesn't necessarily mean he'll be nominated by AMPAS' directors branch, which is much smaller than the DGA. I may as well predict a five-for-five match up, but to see either Lee or Hooper replaced by any of Russell, Tarantino, the Andersons (Wes and P.T.), or even Michael Haneke would not surprise me.

DGA nominees
Ben Affleck for Argo
Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
Tom Hooper for Les Miserables
Ang Lee for Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg for Lincoln

The Artist wins DGA

It should come as a surprise to precisely no one that Michel Hazanavicius all but officially confirmed The Artist's stranglehold on the Best Picture Oscar with a victory from the Directors Guild of America last night, despite being up against four more recognizable names. It's not incredibly dissimilar to last year's event which indicated The King's Speech as the film to beat when newcomer Tom Hooper triumphed over four much more established directors, only this year it's been apparent from the outset of the awards season that The Artist was "the one".

As for Documentary, James Marsh received a consolatory prize after Project Nim was shockingly snubbed by the Academy. Glad to see him walk away from the season with something substantial, but that should totally have been Steve James'.

DGA doc nominees

DGA Documentary nominees
Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Steve James, The Interrupters
James Marsh, Project Nim
Richard Press, Bill Cunningham: New York
Martin Scorsese, George Harrison: Living in the Material World

If you ask me, Steve James deserves this hands down, but will the fact that his film was rudely excluded from the Oscar shortlist influence voters to go with someone else?

DGA nominees

DGA nominees
Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris
David Fincher for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Alexander Payne for The Descendants
Martin Scorsese for Hugo

Well, maybe Dragon Tattoo's citations from the PGA and WGA weren't flukes after all. Colour my a bit confused. Does the industry really love this movie that much, or is this perhaps residual love for Fincher given how the Social Network/King's Speech thing worked out last year? Just speculating here, but of course I'm biased, because I'm not nearly as big a fan of Tattoo as the guilds are.

DGA Predix

The Directors Guild of America will announce their nominees some time today, and it's always an important indicator of where the Academy, which is similar in both size and demographic, will place its support.

My guesses:
Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Alexander Payne for The Descendants
Martin Scorsese for Hugo
Steven Spielberg for War Horse
Tate Taylor for The Help

Hooper, Ferguson take DGA honours

Well fuck.

I might have known this was going to happen. The King's Speech director Tom Hooper is probably in the driver's seat now. Having won the DGA (with BAFTA likely to follow) and directed the film that's going to win Best Picture, I'd say his "coup de directeur" is in full swing. I guess critics' darling The Social Network was just that; a critics' darling.

But maybe Fincher can still come out with a win on Oscar night despite this guild hiccup. Is there a precedent? Turns out the most recent case is when Chicago's Rob Marshall snagged the guild prize away from Polanski and Scorsese in 2003, only to lose the Oscar to more deserving and more overdue Polanski (nice move, Academy!). However, I don't think Fincher has achieved quite that level of "overdue" just yet, and remember Chicago was a musical, the directors of which haven't been taken seriously as Best Director winners since Bob Fosse won for Cabaret nearly 40 years ago!

In more pleasing news, the DGA awarded their documentary honour to perceived Oscar frontrunner Charles Ferguson for his excellent Inside Job. Being the only documentary this year nominated by all four major guilds, I'd say it's a safe call, although the delightful Exit Through the Gift Shop is an intriguing spoiler possibility. People just love that movie. I'll jump for joy if it manages a surprise win.

DGA Preview

They announce tonight. If either Hooper, O'Russell, or Aronofsky want any chance of overtaking Fincher, they'd better do it here. The most likely spoiler is Hooper, now that his film seems poised to take Best Picture at the Oscars, but something seems to say that Fincher is winning no matter what.

Meanwhile, Inside Job's Charles Ferguson will likely have it out against Restrepo's Tim Hetherington and Sebastien Junger for the documentary prize, seeing as their films are the only ones cited by both the DGA and AMPAS. I'm putting my money on Ferguson.

DGA Doucmentary nomiees!

Shame on the DGA for ignoring Banksy and his wonderful achievement in Exit Through the Gift Shop, but I can't say I'm surprised. In lieu of him, I should hope this goes to Charles Ferguson.

Alex Gibney, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
Charles Ferguson, Inside Job
Lixin Fan, Last Train Home
Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger, Restrepo
Davis Guggenheim, Waiting for Superman