One Category at a Time: Best Director

Splits between Best Picture an Best Director have a weird arrhythmic history at the Oscars. They seem to crop up in bunches before to returning to long stretches when it never happens. We seem to be in the middle (or perhaps the end) of one such bunch, which has seen these two top categories go different ways in three of the last four years. Whether or not this is a blip on the radar or a more mainstaying result of the current Best Picture voting mathematics might require a few more years to suss out, but this year it appears that things will return to the status quo.

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.

One Category at a Time: Director

In the Academy's 88 years, only a couple of filmmakers have won back-to-back Best Director Oscars; John Ford in the 40s and Joseph L. Mankiewicz in the 50s. Since then... Not even close. But that all looks to change this year.

My Award Nominations: Director

My final official nominee announcement this year is Best Director. Rather than similarly highlighting just my five Best Picture nominees, I'll be publishing my top 20 pics of the year in two lists on Tuesday and Wednesday. But for now, the five helmers whose storytelling most impressed me in 2015:

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?

Early Oscar Predictions: Best Picture & Director

If you've been tracking the various films I've been predicting in certain categories, then it should go without saying what I'm anticipating to be Best Pictures players. I'll go the limit and pick ten, even though we all know that'll never happen.

One Category at a Time: Director

Most years, the Oscar for Best Director goes hand-in-hand with the Oscar for Best Picture. It stands to reason that if you really love a movie, you love the way it's directed, but sometimes a tight race between two films can result in enough of a discrepancy for the categories to split. What we have this season is not simply a tight race between two films, but between four or five films, meaning dozens of winner permutations are possible.

Point is, we could see a Picture/Director split for the third consecutive year, and even though the critics have made it clear who their preference is, that frontrunner is not necessarily as safe in the hands of the Academy.

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...

My Award Nominations: Best Director

These directors are all master storytellers, but what I particularly love about this group is how they've all told their stories in such different ways. They represent a rich array of stylistic voices and I can't wait to see what they churn out next!

But before looking ahead too far, one look back at the Best Directors of 2014:

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.

One Category at a Time: Director

The Best Picture race is a dead heat this year, which is such a rare occurrence in this age of the preferential ballot (which famously failed to determine the PGA's preference), that for the first time in the years I've been following the Oscars, we have to consider the Best Director race apart and separate from the Best Picture race. Now I hear you exclaim, "But, Awards Prognosticator!... We had to do that last year when Argo won Best Picture and Ang Lee won Best Director!" This is true. But last year was an odd exception wherein the DGA vote came so late, that it was unable to influence the Academy's directors branch into even nominating the Best Picture winner for Best Director. This year, however, there is little doubt that whichever film wins Best Picture will be one of the contenders for Best Director as well, but we still have to analyze that contest separately from Best Picture due to the closeness of the race. We can't afford the luxury of simply assuming that whatever wins the top prize naturally wins for its director too. It may well be the case at the end of the day, but we can't assume that as we have in years past. This time, there's more nuance than that.

Firstly, the frontrunner...

My Award nominations: Director

So many good films this year that I could fill this category entirely with directors of films that aren't even in my top five! But of course, since I always have a hard time divorcing a film from its direction, there is always significant overlap. But I won't tell you just yet which of these five Best Directors will go on to have their films shortlisted for my top award!

Cuaron wins DGA; Momentum now in Gravity's favour

To the surprise of no one, Alfonso Cuaron took last night's top honour from the Directors Guild of America for his magnum space opus Gravity. After last weekend's stunning tie at the PGA Awards, this validates Gravity's position as the true frontrunner in the race for Best Picture, but am I being too hasty?

Many pundits are still predicting a split between Best Picture and Best Director, whereby Steve McQueen's revered 12 Years a Slave wins the former by virtue of its prestige clout and historical importance, but Cuaron wins the latter by virtue of the technical proficiency and degree of difficulty of his film.

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.

Early Oscar predictions - Part 1

Spring is in the air. As the warmer weather thaws me out of post-Oscar hibernation, it's time to start looking ahead to next winter in search of potential awards projects that just might tickle the Academy's fancy. I was going to hold of on this ludicrous practice until after the Cannes Film Festival wrapped up, but it's not like that would make my crystal ball any less foggy, so may as well get it over with.

Last year's early predictions turned out to be a typically imprecise 44/96, but believe it or not, that's actually the best I've ever done! Can I improve?

This is the first of five early predictions pieces I'll be posting this month. I'm starting out this week with Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Actress. Next Monday I'll finish off the major categories.

Pencils down

The polls are closed. All that's left to do is for the eggheads at Price Waterhouse Coopers to tally the votes and deliver the envelopes to the Dolby Theatre. But with so little time until the winners are unveiled, there are still so many questions left to mull over.

One Category at a Time: Director

For an Oscar year as weird as this one to ultimately yield another no-brainer Best Picture winner (from where we stand, at least) is a bit disappointing. Thankfully, all the uncertainty and unpredictability that was once thought to cloud the Best Picture race has instead been concentrated into the competition for Best Director, which is up for grabs in Ben Affleck's conspicuous absence.

In recent years with a Best Picture/Best Director split, Best Director has often gone to the presumed runner-up for Best Picture as a sort of consolation prize. To cite the examples, it certainly seems like Brokeback Mountain, The Pianist, and Traffic all came about as close to winning Best Picture as you can get without actually winning. But it begs the question: Which movie is in the runner-up position? Will that even matter?

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.

My Award nominations: Picture/Director

Well, here they are. My five faves of the year (actually six including my lone director nominee). It's been a strong year, with lots of singular artistic achievements.

There are only 24 days left until the Oscars, which gives me just enough time to start running down predictions one category at a time. The first of those will land later today.

For now, check out my top films after the cut: