Alfonso Cuarón won the Outstanding Director of a Motion Picture prize at the Director’s Guild Awards last night. With that win we now have a frontrunner for Best Picture at the Oscars, but it’s still a tenuous lead.
The DGA’s were the third of the three most important guild awards to announce, after last week’s SAG and PGA ceremonies. In a sense, my outrageous prediction that each of the top three films would win one of those – American Huslte for SAG, 12 Years a Slave for PGA, and Gravity for DGA – actually proved true! But that’s not the whole story, as the PGA awarded a tie to both 12 Years AND Gravity. That means instead of a 3-way tie, the latter has a narrow half-point lead going into the home stretch.
History tells us that whatever wins the DGA will win BP at the Oscars. Recent history tells us the same for PGA. On top of that, we know Picture/Director splits at the Oscars are extremely rare and hard to predict. With that in mind, after straying out on a limb to predict that crazy guild split, I’m going to quit while I’m somewhat ahead play it safe for my Oscar prediction. I predict Gravity will win Best Picture and Best Director.
Still that is a very tough call to make. Its lead is slight at best. It’s also missing an all-important screenplay nomination. (It’s very rare for a film to win BP without being at least nominated for its screenplay.) Many pundits are still predicting a split, with 12 Years taking BP. But going back to history again, usually when there’s a split, the DGA winner actually ends up going on the win Picture, not Director.
This is an unprecedented quandary. Hell, even Hustle could still slip in and steal all the glory. But in the sea of uncertainty, I feel safest anchoring my predictions to Gravity.
The next most important guild awards are the ACE Eddies (American Cinema Editors). Being a very showy technical piece, Gravity is expected to win that too. Going forward it looks like it’s lead will get continually stronger as it expectedly sweeps the more minor technical guilds – Cinematography, Sound, etc.
Here’s the full list of DGA winners…
Feature Film – Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity”
Documentary – Jehane Noujaim, “The Square”
Movies for Television and Miniseries – Steven Soderbergh, “Behind the Candelabra”
Dramatic Series – Vince Gilligan, “Breaking Bad” – “Felina”
Comedy Series – Beth McCarthy-Miller, “30 Rock” – “Hogcock!/Last Lunch”
Variety/Talk/News/Sports — Regularly Scheduled Programming – Don Roy King, “Saturday Night Live with Host Justin Timberlake”
Variety/Talk/News/Sports — Specials – Glenn Weiss, “The 67th annual Tony Awards”
Reality Programs – Neil P. DeGroot, “72 Hours” – “The Lost Coast”
Children’s Programs – Amy Schatz, “An Apology to Elephants”
Commercials – Martin de Thurah, Epoch Films
“The Man Who Couldn’t Slow Down,” Hennessy VS – Droga5
“Human Race,” Acura MDX 2014 – Mullen
Robert B. Aldrich Award – Steven Soderbergh
Frank Capra Achievement Award – Lee Blaine
Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award – Vincent DeDario
Diversity Award – Shonda Rhimes & Betsy Beers
The Screen Life 