The Directors Guild Award nominations were announced today, and in general they tend to be a solid precursor to what we can expect for the Academy Awards. The Oscar contenders will be announced this Thursday, and if they follow the DGA's course, you won't be seeing Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson nominated for Best Director.
The DGA honored 11-time nominee Steven Spielberg for Lincoln, which this guy personally thought was mediocre at best and only kept afloat by Daniel Day-Lewis. The rest of the nominees are mostly what you would expect: Kathryn Bigelow for her controversial Zero Dark Thirty; Ben Affleck for political thriller Argo; Tom Hooper for Les Miserables; and most surprisingly Ang Lee for Life of Pi. Bigelow's film hasn't gone wide yet, but the rest have the benefit of strong word of mouth to go along with reasonably solid box office numbers.
Tarantino was snubbed for Django Unchained, which will come as a surprise to many, but he's hardly the only director who could feel like they got the shaft. Paul Thomas Anderson was left off for The Master, despite hefty critical response, and David O. Russell got no love for crowd-pleasing Silver Linings Playbook. Personally, I think it's a travesty to not have Tarantino or Anderson in the mix, and judging by some of the Internet response I'm not alone. My thoughts on Lincoln are known, but I feel mostly the same way about Les Miserables. It's a whole lot of money spent on bad singing, poor camerawork, and less emotion than any iteration of the stageplay. I'm happy to see Lee honored this way, though, as he was arguably the only director capable of bringing such a challenging book to life.
The winner will be announced on February 22nd.
