Filmoj.


"Hello, everybody. Well the countdown to the Oscars just keeps getting more and more exciting. Today the Directors Guild of America (DGA) announced the nomiees for its annual awards. The DGA is the official union of American film directors and has been handing out a Director of the Year prize since the 1940's. Of all the awards that precede the Oscars at this time of year, the DGA honor is typically the most dead-on accurate barometer of how the Academy will vote--for Best Director and, by default, Best Picture. Again, this duplication can be explained because directors in the union nominate among their peers for the DGA award in the same way that members of the Academy's directors' branch, also from the union, serve as that organization's initial selection committee. This year's nominees are:

Bill Condon ("Dreamgirls")
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris ("Little Miss Sunshine")
Stephen Frears ("The Queen")
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel")
and
Martin Scorsese for ("The Departed")

Of course, Scorsese is the heavyweight here, having previously been nominated six times, most recently for 2004's "The Aviator." Scorsese has never won the DGA prize, per se, but he was honored for his entire body of work a few years ago. There's a lot of interest in Scorsese this time because not only is he without a DGA win for a specific film, he's also famously never won an Oscar. Meanwhile, Stephen Frears was Oscar nominated for 1990's "The Grfiters," which Scorsese produced. On the other hand, Frears was--infamously--not nominated for directing 1988's Best Picture nominee "Dangerous Liaisons." I, for one, am still bent out of shape over that one.

There are some noteworthy omissions for the DGA prize, including Clint Eastwood ("Flags of Our Fathers" and/or "Letters from Iwo Jima"), Emilio Estevez ("Bobby"), Todd Field ("Little Children"), Paul Greengrass ("United 93"), and Guillermo Del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth"); however, the real story here is the two-fer nomination of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for "Little Miss Sunshine." If the momentum for "Little Miss Sunshine" continues, Dayton and Faris will be one of the very few "director teams" nominated for the Oscar. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two others: Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise ("West Side Story" 1961--and they won), and Warren Beatty and Buck Henry ("Heaven Can Wait," 1978); moreover, Faris could find herself only the fourth woman nominated for the Academy's Best Director Oscar--and only the second American woman, in fact. Obviously, a woman has yet to win this award. Should she get the nod, Faris will follow in the footsteps of Lina Wertmuller ("Seven Beauties," 1976), Jane Campion ("The Piano," 1993), and Sofia Coppola ("Lost in Translation," 2003). FYI: Randa Haines ("Children of a Lesser God," 1986), Penny Marshall ("Awakenings," 1990), and Barbra Streisand ("The Prince of Tides, 1991") are all women who directed Best Picture nominees without likewise being recognized.
Below you will find excerpts from two Variety.com articles: one about the DGA, and the other about the USC Scripter Award. The next few weeks will bring nominations from the Writers Guild and the American Society of Cinematographers. The Broadcast Film Critics name their picks this Thursday, the Golden Globes are this coming Monday (1/15), and Oscar noms will be announced Tuesday morning (1/23).

Mp"