Let's Hear it for the Girls!

Katherine Bigelow won the DGA for 'The Hurt Locker'. The first woman to do so.

DGA Nominations

F**k all the people with the obvious hatred for Lee Daniels. The DGA has nominated its first black gay man (or black man period) and a woman in the same year.

Times, they are a changing!

The DGA nominations, or how I should just stop getting my hopes up

because this race is Bo-or-ing.

The same old contenders again. Could they not have shaken things up and left off Ron Howard?

David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight
Gus Van Sant, Milk

In saying it is boring, loads of bloggers were saying Nolan would be left off the list. I was always a firm believer, but as always, reading too many comments can cause doubt.
Silly silly Michael.

Who can still surprise?

DGA Prediction update

Ok, Andrew Stanton is not eligible.

Here are my new Predictions. Laugh all you want.

1 - Christopher Nolan – ‘The Dark Knight’
2 – Danny Boyle – ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
3 – David Fincher – ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’
4 – Gus Van Sant – ‘Milk’
5 - Mike Leigh – ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

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6 – Darren Aronofsky – ‘The Wrestler’

Predicting the DGA

The Directors Guild are a far better precursor for the Best Picture Oscar that the PGA are. In fact they are better at predicting Best Picture than they are at Best Director.

I am completely under the impression (perhaps deluded) that Christopher Nolan is a lock for ‘The Dark Knight’.
I am also pretty sure that David Fincher and Danny Boyle are locks for their respective films.

The final two are going to be interesting. The DGA has no animate category, so they may want to reward the director of the best reviewed films of the year and give Andrew Stanton and nod for WALL-E. Animation is not an easy thing to direct. If it were there would be a lot more quality animated films out there, and there are not.

Perhaps they will want to reward a smaller film, and give a nod to Mike Leigh or Jonathan Demme for their wonderful, but difficult to pull off films.
Or will critical darlings Gus Van Sant and Darren Aronofsky a nod? I am not convinced (or rather I need it not to be so for the sake of dying of boredom with this years race) that Ron Howard is going to garner a nod here.

In ranking I predict

1 - Christopher Nolan – ‘The Dark Knight’
2 – Danny Boyle – ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
3 – David Fincher – ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’
4 – Gus Van Sant – ‘Milk’
5 - Andrew Stanton – ‘WALL-E’

And the rest

6 – Darren Aronofsky – ‘The Wrestler’
7 – Ron Howard – ‘Frost/Nixon’
8 – Mike Leigh – ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’
9 - Jonathan Demme – ‘Rachel Getting Married’

The Directors Guild Announce nominees!

And they are:

Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly


This is a very very strong list, however the absence of Joe Wright name for "Atonement" is a slap in the face to film making. Then again none of these films are what you would call dusty and Wright directed an old fashioned movie in an old fashioned way. Perhaps it is just far too British, or perhaps it does not feel important enough to reward.

I guess I should not really bitch about this though, it has been a great year for movies and this is a strong list (from what I have heard). Yay for movies!!