Directors Guild of America Awards regular Martin Scorsese and first-timer Michel Hazanavicius are the favorites as Hollywood’s top filmmaker group prepares to hand out prizes.
Past winner Scorsese is nominated again for the guild’s feature-film honor for his Paris adventure “Hugo,” while Hazanavicius scored his first nomination for his silent-movie “The Artist.”
Also in the running are Woody Allen for his romantic fantasy “Midnight in Paris”; David Fincher for his thriller “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”; and Alexander Payne for his family drama “The Descendants.”
The Directors Guild Awards are one of Hollywood’s most accurate forecasts for who will win at the industry’s top honors, the Academy Awards, which will be handed out Feb. 26. Only six times in the 63-year history of the guild awards has the winner failed to take home the Oscar for best director, and more often than not, the film winning the best director Oscar is voted best picture.
Fincher had been the favorite going into the Directors Guild ceremony last year for “The Social Network,” but Tom Hooper came away the winner for “The King’s Speech.” Hooper went on to win the Oscar, too, and his film also earned best picture.
This time, Fincher’s the odd man out at the Directors Guild show. The other four guild nominees made the best-director cut at Tuesday’s Oscar nominations, but Fincher missed out. The fifth Oscar slot went to Terrence Malick for the family chronicle “The Tree of Life.”
French filmmaker Hazanavicius, whose credits include the spy spoofs “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” and “OSS 117: Lost in Rio,” had been a virtual unknown in Hollywood until “The Artist,” his black-and-white throwback to early cinema that has been a favorite at earlier film honors.
“The Artist” won the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy and is considered a best-picture front-runner for the Oscars.
But Scorsese won the Globes’ singular directing prize over Hazanavicius.
Unlike Hazanavicius, the other nominees all have competed for Directors Guild honors before. Scorsese earned his ninth and 10th guild nominations this season; besides feature-film, he’s nominated for documentary directing for “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.”
Scorsese is a past feature-film winner for 2006’s “The Departed,” as well as a TV drama winner a year ago for an episode of “Boardwalk Empire.” The family film “Hugo” was a departure for Scorsese, known for dark crime tales, and the movie also was his first shot in 3-D.
Allen has been nominated five times and won for 1977’s “Annie Hall.” He had not been nominated since his 1989 “Crimes and Misdemeanors” but has been on a critical and commercial resurgence for “Midnight in Paris,” his biggest hit in decades.
This was the third nomination for Fincher. Payne was nominated one time previously, for 2004’s “Sideways.”
Kelsey Grammer is the host for the guild ceremony, which is not televised. Awards presenters include Oscar nominees George Clooney (“The Descendants”), Michelle Williams (“My Week with Marilyn”), Gary Oldman (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”), Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo (“The Artist”), and Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain (“The Help”).
Oscar Nominees Delve Into The Art Of Editing At ACE Session
You couldn’t miss Sean Baker at this past Sunday’s Oscar ceremony where he won for Best Picture, Directing, Original Screenplay and Editing on the strength of Anora. However, earlier that weekend he was in transit from the Cesar Awards in Paris and thus couldn’t attend the American Cinema Editors (ACE) 25th annual panel of Academy Award-nominated film editors held at the Regal LA Live Auditorium on Saturday (3/1) in Los Angeles. While the eventual Oscar winner in the editing category was missed by those who turned out for the ACE “Invisible Art, Visible Artists” session, three of Baker’s fellow nominees were on hand--Dávid Jancsó, HSE for The Brutalist; Nick Emerson for Conclave; and Myron Kerstein, ACE for Wicked. Additionally, Juliette Welfling, who couldn’t appear in person due to the Cesar Awards, was present via an earlier recorded video interview to discuss her work on Emilia Pérez. The interview was conducted by ACE president and editor Sabrina Plisco, ACE who also moderated the live panel discussion. Kerstein said that he was the beneficiary of brilliant and generous collaborators, citing, among others, director Jon M. Chu, cinematographer Alice Brooks, and visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. The editor added it always helps to have stellar acting performances, noting that hearing Cynthia Erivo, for example, sing live was a revelation. Kerstein recalled meeting Chu some eight years ago on a “blind Skype date” and it was an instant “bromance”--which began on Crazy Rich Asians, and then continued on such projects as the streaming series Home Before Dark and the feature In The Heights. Kerstein observed that Chu is expert in providing collaborators with... Read More