Directors Guild Nominations

The surprises keep coming this awards season where nearly everything is still up in the air making it one of the more exciting Oscar precursor season in recent memory. By virtue of things being largely unsettled and the Academy's new procedures for picking Best Picture nominations, the Directors Guild was the one branch that people hoped would settle a few things. Well it did and it didn't as you can see from their nominations below.

The DGA nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Feature Film for 2011 are:

• Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
• David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
• Alexander Payne, The Descendants
• Martin Scorsese, Hugo

These nominations solidified The Big 3 Films of this year's season as Hugo, The Artist, and The Descendants. Not only are their directors the only ones of the five who were also nominated for Golden Globes and BFCA, but they've had wide support from critics and guilds alike. The Descendants remain the only film to hit every major guild with The Artist missing WGA (ineligible) and Hugo lacking SAG. One of these three will win this, most likely Hazanavicius, and all of them will surely be nominated for an Oscar. Their three films as well will be fighting it out for Best Picture. I'd be shocked if another film makes it over these three. But now the fun begins...

Woody Allen seemed like a very good bet for a nomination as well especially with Midnight in Paris doing well with all of the major guilds, but it's been awhile since his skills as director has been noticed by the DGA and the Academy and I was afraid the summer release would make everyone forget about this lovely film. Plus with the field being quite stacked this year, the Academy may decide to honor Allen for his screenplay instead. Of course, they could also do both. Then there's the shock nomination of David Fincher this morning for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The film is certainly good (I really liked it), but precious few predicted Fincher to make it over Steven Spielberg, Tate Taylor, or even Terrence Malick. I'm fine with it in general, but if there was going to be a surprise nominee I was rooting for Drive's Nicolas W. Refn or Shame's Steve McQueen. War Horse and Tree of Life probably needed this more though to give their dwindling Oscar chances a boost after decidedly not getting much love from the guilds.

So now the question remains who will get nominated for an Oscar? The DGA has rarely gone 5/5 with the Academy. Just last year the Academy decided to nominate the Coen brothers over DGA-nominated Christopher Nolan. This year, Allen and Fincher sit in that precarious spot, the latter more than the former. I think Taylor and Spielberg have the best chances, the former because of the film's popularity and the latter because of the director's popularity. But this year... who knows anymore, right?