Three first-time nominees and two earning their second career nominations comprise the field of directors vying for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2009.
Those in their second go-around in the DGA Award competition are: James Cameron, whose latest nomination is for Avatar (Twentieth Century Fox); and Quentin Tarantino who is nominated for Inglourious Basterds (The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures).
Cameron was first nominated–and won the DGA Award–for Titanic in 1997. Tarantino’s initial nomination came on the strength of Pulp Fiction in ’94.
The trio of first-time director nominees in the feature category this year are: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (Summit Entertainment); Lee Daniels for Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire (Lionsgate); and Jason Reitman for Up In The Air (Paramount Pictures).
Bigelow and Reitman share another common bond. They are both on the rosters of commercial production houses. Bigelow signed last year with RSA Films for spots. Reitman’s long-time roost for commercials is Tate USA.
The winner in the feature category will be named at the 62nd annual DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, January 30, at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles
The DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film has traditionally been one of the industry’s most accurate barometers for who will win the Best Director Academy Award. Only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has the feature film winner not gone on to win the corresponding Academy Award. Those six exceptions to the rule were:
• Director Anthony Harvey won the DGA Award for The Lion in Winter in ’68 while Carol Reed took home the Oscar® for Oliver!
• Francis Ford Coppola received the DGA honor for The Godfather in ’72 while the Academy selected Bob Fosse for Cabaret.
• Steven Spielberg received his first DGA Award for The Color Purple in ’85 while the Oscar® went to Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa.
• Ron Howard was chosen by the DGA for his direction of Apollo 13 in ’95 while Academy voters selected Mel Gibson for Braveheart.
• And Ang Lee won the DGA Award for his direction of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000 while Steven Soderbergh won the Academy Award for Traffic.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More