BEST DIRECTOR

Nominees:

David O. Russell, American Hustle; Alexander Payne, Nebraska; Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave; Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity; Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street.

THOMPSON:

Alfonso Cuaron. It’s safe to say Alfonso Cuaron has never made a bad movie. With Gravity, he’s invented a new one. He came up with a complex multimedia technique of filming weightlessness in space to showcase his gripping survival adventure.

MONK:

Steve McQueen. Not only does he have a name that conjures the ghost of a Hollywood legend, this English director rewrote an entire chapter of U.S. history without a hint of the romantic mist that made previous Old South movies so hazy in the face of human-made horror.

STONE:

Alfonso Cuaron. He created the universe of Gravity with actors, computers and his imagination. Houston, we have an auteur.