DGA Winner And New Oscar Frontrunner: 'The King's Speech'

Yes, Tom Hooper wins the coveted DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2010. This pretty much signifies that The King's Speech is now the film to beat at the Oscars, as DGA winners have also taken Best Director all but six times since the first DGA awarding in 1948. The film also took the top PGA prize, which, along with the DGA win, probably indicates a Best Picture/Best Director sweep. Is it game, set & match yet? Not necessarily, but it's getting close. The Social Network still has a shot, but ultimately it comes down to this: A Gen-Y film going up against crowd-pleasing British prestige -- the latter of which fits right in with the Academy's tastes. They're old and sentimental and are desensitized to the smell of innovation. How's that for a generalization?

Just two weeks ago, it seemed as if The Social Network was destined for greatness at the Oscars. It dominated the Critics' Choice Awards and Golden Globes on the same weekend, and was also the clear favorite among most critic groups. But the Academy is not comprised of critics, and the HFPA has lost much of its credibility, so all of these wins are impressive, but certainly not the most telling.

At this point in the Oscar race, there are three things that are most indicative of what film will win Best Picture: PGA results, DGA results, and the number of Oscar nominations a film receives. The King's Speech won the DGA and PGA awards, and leads the pack with twelve nominations -- four more than The Social Network. It's all but over.

Oscar Talk: Final Predictions, PGA Implications, My Wish List & Preferential Vote Tallying

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) awarded The King's Speech over The Social Network last week, leaving a glimmer of hope for Firth, Hooper, the Weinsteins & Co., but probably not enough to start predicting a Best Picture spoiler... yet. A DGA (Directors Guild of America) upset would be a much more reassuring victory for The King's Speech, but the small bit of momentum it carries is probably too little, too late. It is interesting, however, that the PGA awarded The King's Speech, because I also feel that The Fighter is likely to win the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Best Ensemble award, which carries significance in its own right. One would think that The Social Network's dominance would be reflected in a sweep of the major guilds, but that doesn't seem to be happening. The DGA winner will be announced on Saturday, January 29. The Screen Actors Guild Awards will air on Sunday, January 30, and I believe you can catch that on TBS.

Oscar nominations are set to be announced tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM PT (8:30 AM ET). There will surely be a few snubs and surprises, as there always are, but I've got a feeling that consensus thinking is really going to leave its mark this year. The build-up towards nominations is probably as exciting as it gets for awards season, as there's always that glimmer of hope for movies that you'd really like to see make the cut.

Here's a list of some underdogs that I'd like to see grab a surprise nomination tomorrow morning...

• 127 Hour's Danny Boyle for Best Director
• The Ghost Writer for Best Picture
• Biutiful's Javier Bardem for Best Actor
• Shutter Island's Leonardo Dicaprio for Best Actor
• Easy A's Emma Stone for Best Actress
• Conviction's Sam Rockwell for Best Supporting Actor
• The Ghost Writer for Best Adapted Screenplay
• Greenberg for Best Original Screenplay
• Winter's Bone for Cinematography

Final Predictions in major categories after the jump...

A Changing of the Guard

A growing trend of the last several awards seasons has been the increasing amount of recognition for new-school filmmakers such as David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Danny Boyle, P.T. Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, David O. Russell, Darren Aronofsky, and others. All of these guys have been directing films for at least a decade, and a few of them are approaching twenty years of service in Hollywood, so I hesitate to refer to them as new-school, but it's certainly something of a new era in the grand scheme of things.

David Fincher's breakthrough film was 1995's Seven, and he followed that up four years later with Fight Club. Both films were received warmly by moviegoers and critics, but neither were nominated for any major awards. Skip ahead to 2011, and Fincher already has one Oscar nomination for his directorial work in 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. His new film, The Social Network, has been racking up all kinds of awards and nominations over the last month or two. To say that it's the frontrunner for Best Picture at the Oscars this year would be like saying that Charlie Sheen loves hanging with pornstars and doing coke... it's quite obvious.

Directors such as Danny Boyle, Chris Nolan and Tarantino have also been enjoying mainstream success over the last few years. Boyle dominated the Oscars in 2009 with Slumdog Millionaire, and Tarantino got a well-deserved directorial nomination for Inglorious Basterds last year. Chris Nolan pretty much single-handedly caused the AMPAS to expand their best picture field from five to ten films last year, as an overwhelming amount of The Dark Knight supporters voiced their dissent over the film's 2009 Oscar snub. Nolan did score a DGA nomination in 2009, however.

Directors Guild Nominees: 2011

This morning, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) announced their five nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2010. For those who aren't aware, the DGA is a film and television labor union specializing in the interest of directors in the United States motion picture industry. This group is comprised of thousands of directors working in the film and television industry, including many big-name Hollywood directors and an overwhelming abundance of commercial & television directors. The DGA has been around since 1936, and this year marks the 75th anniversary of their annual awards ceremony.

To put this into some perspective, the DGA nominees are regarded by most Oscar pundits to be the biggest indicator of who and what films the AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts/Sciences, or simply Oscar voters) will recognize in the fields of Best Picture and Best Achievement in Direction. Historically, the AMPAS tends to mimic the DGA in their selections more so than any other guild, critics group, association, etc. In fact, over the years, DGA award winners have lined up with AMPAS directorial winners AND best picture winners at an astounding percentage (that of which I can't recall specifically, but i'm fairly positive that it's at least over 75%).

Both the DGA and AMPAS are comprised of industry professionals, though unlike the AMPAS, the DGA does not recieve DVD screeners from studios and distributors. This makes it a little less likely for small indie films to be recognized by the DGA, as voters might not get a chance to catch some of those films in theaters due to inadequate distribution.

More after the jump...