The five nominees for the 2010 Directors Guild Award are Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, James Cameron for Avatar, Lee Daniels for Precious, Jason Reitman for Up in the Air, and Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. The likely winner?
Following the Producers Guild Award going to The Hurt Locker (box-office gross: less than $13 million) instead of Avatar (box-office gross: more than $560 million), chances are that Kathryn Bigelow will beat former husband James Cameron at the DGA Awards. Although Cameron's film is as much a director's movie as Bigelow's, she is the one who has been getting nearly all the best director awards to date. (The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe for Cameron was a glaring exception. And one should remember that Golden Globe voters idolize box-office hits.)
If there's to be a surprise when the DGA Award winner is named this evening, I'd say it would be a victory for Quentin Tarantino.
If Bigelow wins, she'll be the first woman in the DGA's history to receive the Guild's Award for narrative features. She'll also be the one to beat at Oscar time. Since 1950, all but six* DGA winners have gone on to win the best director Academy Award.
* The DGA's 1948 winner, Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives, won the 1949 best director Academy Award. The 1949 DGA winner, Robert Rossen, was nominated that year for All the King's Men.
Photo: The Hurt Locker (Jonathan Olley / Summit Entertainment)
Bigelow MUST win.
Not because she's a woman.
But because
her movie is
THE BEST OF THE YEAR!