Follow the Yellow Brick Road: The DGA Announces Nominees Tuesday

The Oscars are the Land of Oz, complete with illusionary finery and the jarringly ordinary old man behind the curtain. The Yellow Brick Road gets us there. All of the characters and traumas along the way are all part of this crazy season. Winners and losers, all in the name of the game. The momentum usually builds, with each nomination announcement whipping up the frenzy of expectations, dashed hopes, and ongoing victories all culminating in — at last, the Oscar nominations.

The frenzy has given way to general unease this year as everyone kind of looks around at how different everything looks all of a sudden. Oscar ballots were turned in first — before the PGA, WGA and DGA nominations. Those guideposts have been kicked to the wind and Oscar voters are going rogue. No one knows how this experiment will play out but for us Oscar watchers it’s like we were chasing something that suddenly just isn’t there.

Now, as we wait for the Oscar nominations on Thursday, the DGA announcements on Monday seem almost as an afterthought. Do we really care who gets nominated for the DGA? Does it even matter now? Do any of them matter now? Are we actually, for once, going to have to look at the guild honors as honors unto themselves and not stepping stones that lead to Oscar? I think we just might.

Tuesday, the DGA will neither confirm nor deny what the Oscar voters will do. All they can do is tell us is what the 14,500 DGA voters did and wait and see if those match what the 400 or so Academy voters have already done in the Director category. Typically, the DGA and Oscar and Oscar don’t match up 100%. The DGA is better for predicting Best Picture (when there were only five) than it ever has been for predicting a 5 for 5 match in Best Director.

Clusterfuck be damned, we are still diving right in.

We are pretty sure that the leaders in this category are locked for Best Director: Steven Spielberg for Lincoln, Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty and Ben Affleck for Argo. Probably Ang Lee for Life of Pi is the fourth.

That leaves one slot open at the DGA, and possibly one slot open at the Academy, though it’s theoretically possible Ang Lee will be popular with one group but not the other. Put it this way, if he isn’t nominated it will be a bit of a shocker since he’s won two DGA awards and one Oscar.

Ang Lee being announced as one of the five DGA nominees would confirm what we suspected about the race but it would also lend legitimacy to Life of Pi more than any other previous announcement thus far.

But more in need of that legitimacy are the three names vying for that fifth slot – and they are David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained and Tom Hooper for Les Miserables.

All of these directors have previously been nominated for DGA awards except Ben Affleck. This will be his first DGA nod for director and probably his first Oscar nod as director. Other actors turned directors got lucky on their first time out. Robert Redford, Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson all won Director and Picture the first time they were nominated in the director category at the Oscars. For Redford and Costner, they won their first and only DGA nomination. Affleck could follow in those footsteps, or he could be like George Clooney, Ron Howard, Clint Eastwood and other more tried and true actors-turned-directors who get nominated, and sometimes win.

Argo is one of those films that’s very hard to hate. It’s not a punishing sit and is the one with the least baggage, and sadly, the Oscar race for Best Picture is often like a political election.  Votes gets divided up between people who vote for what they love and people who vote for what they can tolerate.  Someone who backs Paul Thomas Anderson and has no favorite in the five nominated films might pick Argo because it isn’t Lincoln and it isn’t Zero Dark Thirty and it isn’t Les Miserables.  There are likely going to be many independents, if you will, who will embrace Argo even if it isn’t their number one.  Funny, tense, moves along in a clip — probably what Argo has going for it most is that it’s a movie about a movies — a movie that says movies are the universal language and even Iranians who hate Americans still love our movies.

It says much about Kathryn Bigelow’s work that she is once again in the running for Best Director. This time it certainly doesn’t feel like they’re just going to reward her as a woman, as many accused them of doing during The Hurt Locker days. This proves that, no, she is truly thought of as one of the boys. She has always maintained that she would prefer to be thought of as a filmmaker rather than a “woman filmmaker.” You can’t really make history twice but Bigelow could do just that by become the only woman to win a second DGA award and a second Oscar for director.

There is no getting around the torture controversy.  I’ve never really seen a film ride so high in the race and then get hit so hard with a political controversy quite like Zero Dark Thirty.  What does that mean in the end? It’s hard to say. I like to think that it still comes down to the movie.  And this movie is a dark thriller with no easy answers. It doesn’t soothe its audience — and it doesn’t provide a victorious ending.  It is very well written, directed and acted — and a film that says much about our past, present and future. It is complex and in fact, it has officially become a film that can’t really be talked about without talking about the torture.  If you say you love Zero Dark Thirty and you’re aware of the content you have to then decide how you feel about torture, the capture of Bin Laden, the truth, the CIA and everything else.  It isn’t just a movie anymore.  It also seems kind of trivial to even talk about Oscars up against such a serious topic, which makes wrapping your arms around Zero Dark Thirty complicated.

Ang Lee would be looking at his fourth DGA nomination.  Life of Pi is not a film about “finding God on a boat.” It’s a film about human existence, really, making sense of this mortal coil.  It is at once the Buddhist credo, that life is suffering, as much as it is a glorious celebration of the spectrum of beauty the natural world provides.  Life of Pi takes you under but then brings you back, revives you and sends you back out on the street as though you’ve experienced something deeply profound.  That’s powerful stuff, though not for everyone.   The target demo seems to be having trouble with this one, as they are having trouble with Lincoln. They like movies like The Master and can tolerate Argo.  But they’re a long way from emotions deeply felt.  Thus, Life of Pi is a tricky sell. Those of us who love it, however, love it with unbridled passion.

Tom Hooper would be looking at his second nomination after having won in 2010.  Les Miserables is an even tougher sell than Life of Pi and is one of those movies that you’re either swept up in or you’re not. Another one of those this year was Cloud Atlas.  The difference between the two is that Les Miserables had a built-in, multi-generational audience that has waited years for it to hit the big screen. They’re bringing all of that context with them. It will just depend on how many voters are among the people who loved Les Miserables.  For those who love it they will tell you that it’s a sad movie about struggling, unwashed masses. Other themes people are taking away from it, or projecting onto it, are its positive take on adoption, feminism and as a living memorial to AIDS. I saw none of these things but Les Mis appears to be a template that works on a variety of levels for many people.  It is the most divisive film in the race.

David O. Russell would be looking at his second nomination. Silver Linings Playbook is one of those movies that many people love regardless of their age, sex, economic status or language even. It is the only love story in the bunch and has the most desirable actress in Hollywood starring in it. This is one of those movies, like The Artist, like The King’s Speech, where a man’s ego is on the line.  Everyone in the film, especially the women, eventually helps him prop his ego back up and then he can believe in himself.  This is apparently a very popular motif among Oscar voters. Is it because they all feel like failures and these movies make them feel like winners? Is it because they have to vote for characters they want to see win?   Either way, Silver Linings is the movie I hear people talking about most.  It’s got strong word of mouth and remains every bit the crowd-pleaser it was when it won the audience award in Toronto.

Quentin Tarantino only just joined the DGA but even still has been nominated twice.  This would be his third.  Amid so many gloomy films with deep, heavy themes, Django Unchained offers the opposite: a total release.  The music, the funny moments and the ultimate bloodshed, Django is one of the more unforgettable films in the race, I’d say, though it isn’t easy to sit through, particularly in the last twenty minutes.   Like Lincoln, it brings our history and memory of slavery back to the surface.  It has been caught up in some controversy from the African American community and from people who think it goes too far with its graphic violence. For me, the best thing about the movie is Jamie Foxx. Also, Tarantino can direct the shit out of a movie.

And that brings us to someone who might be dubbed the King of the DGA, Steven Spielberg. Spielberg has been nominated by the DGA 10 times and has won three of those, along with also having received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Spielberg is both the most awarded and most nominated director in the Feature film category in the history of DGA.

Lincoln is the best film of 2012 in its writing, acting and directing (in my humble opinion).  It hasn’t won any major critics awards yet and it may never win a single thing from here on through the Oscars but it really doesn’t change what Lincoln is, what a success it is for Spielberg so late in his impressive, prolific career.  In the bubble Lincoln is not what is sexy to film critics.  Outside the bubble, Americans are quietly coming out of their homes and driving down to their local multiplex and paying to see a film, something many of them do maybe once a year, if that.  To have earned $140 million with a film about the 13th amendment with no special effects, 3-D, or sweeping battle scenes to drive people in. No, this is a movie about people talking. But oh, what they’re talking about!

So yes, in all of the years I’ve been covering the Oscar race I’ve never seen one of these films come along.  I missed Titanic and I missed Schindler’s List so I don’t really know if those films were being underestimated the way Lincoln now is. And I don’t even know if the film will win anything. What I do know is that it is the best film of the year and hats off to Steven Spielberg for having directed it.

My predictions for the DGA as follows:

Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Ben Affleck, Argo
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

I will not be surprised if either Tom Hooper for Les Mis or Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained take that fifth spot. The reason I’m sticking with Russell is twofold.

The Weinstein Co, possibly aiming for their third Best Picture win in a row know that they need David O. Russell to be nominated here to win. Without a DGA nom, it is nearly impossible to win.

Silver Linings Playbook is very very likable by both sexes and across all ages. The DGA, unlike the Academy, are not dominated by straight white dudes. I feel the power of Tarantino and I feel the power of Les Miserables — I know both are very strong contenders here — but I can’t help but think the crowd-pleasing Silver Linings will prevail.

As for the Oscars, David O. Russell also has to get in there if Silver Linings has a shot at winning. Ditto Tom Hooper. The only name I could imagine being bumped is Ang Lee for Life of Pi — and even that doesn’t seem likely to me.

Finally, when we’re talking about the directing category for the Oscars it’s a slightly different ballgame. Michael Haneke or Paul Thomas Anderson could show up there instead of Russell, Hooper or Tarantino.

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