May 25, 2012

Directors Guild of America Announces Award Nominees

Scorsese, Hazanavicius and Fincher feel the love; Spielberg and Malick are out in the cold

by Rebecca Pahle | Published January 9, 2012

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film, sending Oscar prognosticators into a tizzy as they attempt to determine what effect the DGA nominations will have on the Oscar chances for both the films that received nominations and those that did not.

The five nominees are Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), David Fincher (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), Alexander Payne (The Descendants) and Martin Scorsese (Hugo). All of the nominated directors, with the exception of Hazanavicius, are repeat nominees. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the lot is Fincher, whose The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been receiving less love on the awards circuit than films like Steven Spielberg’s War Horse or Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.

“The directors nominated this year for the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film Award have each demonstrated an inspired command of the medium,” says DGA president Taylor Hackford. “The fact that their prodigious talents have been recognized by their peers is the highest honor a director can achieve.”

Historically, the correlation between a DGA Awards win and Oscar success is fairly high. The past eight DGA winners (which includes Martin Scorsese for The Departed) have all have gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Director. During the same span of time, only one year saw the awards for Best Director and Best Picture split between two films.

For more information on the Directors Guild of America or the DGA Awards, visit www.dga.org. Check back on Thursday, January 12th, when the nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary are announced.