The Director’s Guild of America (DGA) isn’t shy of letting folks know that only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has the Feature Film winner not gone on to win the corresponding Academy Award. So to assume we don’t have our Director and Best Picture films locked and loaded is a little bit silly at this point as the five nominees named by the DGA correspond to my most recent Best Director predictions – that is, based on these nominees, which are as follows:
- Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
- Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
- Gus Van Sant (Milk)
- David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
- Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
I thought for a long time Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married) or Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road) may get a bump in the Oscar push from the DGA’s, but it looks like our top five films for 2008 are pretty much prepped and ready to go.
The winner will be named at the 61st Annual DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, January 31 2009, at the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.