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The Slow Road To The Oscars, Part II
by Eugene Monzon, Jr.
Unlike Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren, who are the favorites to take home Oscar gold for Best Actor and Actress, there is no clear-cut favorite as to who will take home the Best Picture and Best Director.
That race seems to be, at the moment, between Letters From Iwo Jima and The Departed for Best Picture and between United 93 director Paul Greengrass and The Departed's Martin Scorsese for Best Director. With the recent nomination announcement by the Producers Guild of America (PGA), which picks a Best Picture of the Year, and the Directors Guild of America (DGA), which selects a Best Director of the Year, there may be a clear picture of who will win the Oscar.
To give you some background - The PGAs and the DGAs are usually a good indicator as to who will be nominated and eventually win the Best Picture and Best Director Academy Award.
This year's PGA noms include 3 indie darlings and 2 major studio pictures - Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, The Departed and Dreamgirls. The big omission - Clint Eastwood's WWII drama Letters From Iwo Jima, which was an odds-on favorite. Now that's not to say that come January 23, when the Oscar nominations are announced, we won't hear Iwo Jima called out along with a few surprises. One of the surprises that could stir up Hollywood early that morning is the aforementioned 9/11 film United 93. Since the start of the 2006 award season, Greengrass' dramatic look at that tragic flight has snared 11 Best Picture honors.
Fun Fact #1 - 3 out of the 6 previous PGA winners went on to win the Oscar in the Best Picture Category.
At 10 am this morning in Hollywood the DGA announced their 6 - yes, 6 nominees for Best Director. This year's crop of directors is made up of 5 first time nominees and 1 Hollywood legend - Martin Scorsese (who received his 7th nomination but has never won). The other nominees include the husband and wife team of Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), Stephen Frears (The Queen) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel).
Once again Eastwood's name was not mentioned, all but guaranteeing that Scorsese will be honored with his first ever DGA award and Oscar. Why? Because Eastwood, an award show darling, beat out Martin for the 2004 DGA award and the Oscar that same year for Million Dollar Baby. Another director joining Clint on the sidelines is Paul Greengrass who has already received 5 Best Director awards so far this year.
Fun fact #2 (Mr. Scorsese pay attention) - in the past 10 years, 8 of the 10 DGA winners went on to win the Best Director Oscar.
Could this actually be Scorsese's year? Will the Academy choose to commemorate those events of 9/11? Only time will tell.
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