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.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More