63rd Annual Directors Guild of America Award Winners

Winners are in *BLUE. To check complete list of winners go here.

Was wrong, not Fincher but Hooper. As you can imagine most critics I follow in twitter are not happy with the result; one particular tweet says: "critics matter" like trying to reaffirm critics' function. As DGA is one of the largest Guilds, now 'everyone' is 'affirming' that The King's Speech will win 'everything'.

So, what do I say? Me for one liked a lot more The King's Speech than The Social Network as the first was more emotional than the second which I liked basically for the business story. But if I consider only the director's work, absolutely agree that between these two films, Tom Hooper did a better job creating a better movie.

Of course my award goes to Daren Aronofsky as he did an incredible job with actors, screenplay,tech specs and managed to create a film that almost each viewer will be able to see in it whatever they want to see. Not often you have a movie that so successfully allows viewers to have their own interpretation, much less in American cinema that tends to 'chew' everything so viewers see exactly what they want them to see.

Truth is that if we follow 'tradition' this win means that The King's Speech just went up in the odds. But there is a small percentage that suggests that Oscar race is still interesting, at least until tonight when we learn the SAG (another large Guild) winners. If The King's Speech ensemble wins, then seems that DGA's 'tradition' will remain intact.

In a few hours we will have a more clear perspective if Oscar race becomes less predictable and more interesting or not.

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A few minutes ago the guild announced the nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2010. This is one of the oldest guilds as 2011 marks the 75th anniversary of the DGA.

Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
David Fincher for The Social Network
*Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech
Christopher Nolan for Inception
David O. Russell for The Fighter

I was sure about the first three nominees but can’t deny my surprise with the bottom two and really regret that excellent Debra Granik (for Winter’s Bone) did not get honored. I really liked a lot more Winter’s Bone than Inception or The Fighter and the last, can’t understand why honoring a director that could have made a much better movie or at least, better balanced among all lead characters.

For obvious reasons last year was -and seems will be in the near future- the most exciting times to follow nominees and winner for this guild and the Oscar. Remember when Kathryn Bigelow got a DGA nomination after she and her film was ignored at indie awards?

As they say in the official announcement, that’s here, the DGA winner “has traditionally been one of the industry’s most accurate barometers for who will win the Best Director Academy Award; only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has the DGA winner not gone on to win the corresponding Academy Award”. Today I’m taking a risk to say that the winner is: David Fincher and this year the tradition will continue intact.

Today, January 12, the guild announced the nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement.

Lixin Fan for Last Train Home
*Charles Ferguson for Inside Job
Alex Gibney for Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
Davis Guggenheim for Waiting for Superman
Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for Restrepo

Award ceremony will be on Saturday, January 29.