DGA vs. Academy Winners

DGA vs. Academy Winners

Catherine Zeta Jones in Chicago (top); Adrien Brody in The Pianist (bottom)

Since its inception in 1948, 51 out of 59 winners of the Directors Guild Award have gone on to win the best director Academy Award.
The eight exceptions are:
 
1948
DGA – Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives*
AA – John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
* Mankiewicz won the 1948 DGA for A Letter to Three Wives, as the award period extended into early 1949. He went on to win a 1949 Oscar for that film.
 
1949
DGA – Robert Rossen for All the King’s Men
AA – Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives (see above)
 
1968
DGA – Anthony Harvey [...]

MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA – Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
Direction: Rob Marshall
Screenplay: Robin Swicord; from Arthur Golden’s novel
Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Ken Watanabe, Koji Yakusho, Youki Kudoh, Mako, Tsai Chin
 

 

There are some movies that are released before their time. Only years or decades later, do they come to be appreciated. In the case Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, based on Arthur Golden’s bestseller about the life and love of a young geisha in pre-World War II Japan, it’s the other way around. It is a movie released after – way after — its time.
As long as its makers chopped off about a third of its 145-minute running time, Memoirs of a Geisha would have worked beautifully as a silent film, [...]