Directors’ noms put focus on Oscar race
FEBRUARY 2019’s Directors Guild Award and, quite likely, the Oscar equivalent, will go to one of “BlacKkKlansman,” “Green Book,” “Roma,” “A Star is Born” or “Vice,” with “The Favourite” notable by its absence.
Come Feb 2, and Bradley Cooper could have won both the Directors Guild of America’s First-Time Feature award as well as the overall Feature Film accolade for his music-themed romantic drama “A Star is Born.”
Co- starring with Lady Gaga, Cooper also directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the latest iteration of a film that had been remade three times prior.
He made the DGA’s final five along with Spike Lee for “BlacKkKlansman,” Peter Farrelly for “Green Book,” 2014 winner Alfonso Cuarón for “Roma”, and Adam McKay for “Vice.”
Being a foreign-language film has not prevented Cuarón’s Spanish and Mixtec movie from featuring heavily in mainline Best Film categories throughout awards season to date, and the DGA’s selection only strengthens its momentum.
The Directors Guild award is considered the best available indicator of a directors’ imminent Oscar glory.
Nine of the last ten DGA Best Film winners have become recipient of the next available Best Director Oscar at the Academy Awards.
DGA involvement in predicting Best Picture Oscar winners is less certain with a 7/10 hit rate over the same period which, while fairly reliable as these things go, is bettered by the Producers Guild’s 8/10 score.
Both wobbled in 2016 and 2017, when “Spotlight” and “Moonlight” won Best Picture Oscars, while the DGA and PGA went for “The Revenant” and “The Big Short” one year and then “La La Land” the next.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” is a notable frontrunner this awards season but does not appear on the DGA’s list. A Best Picture Oscar for Lanthimos would indicate a further decoupling of Academy and Directors Guild results.
Nominated for the DGA’s FirstTime Feature award, alongside Cooper, are Bo Burnham (“Eighth Grade”), Carlos López Estrada (“Blindspotting”), twotime DGA Documentary award winner Matthew Heineman (“A Private War”) and Boots Riley (“Sorry to Bother You”).