65th Directors Guild of America Awards Winners

As expected by me, Ben Affleck got the Guild's top award and now the "heat" for him not being nominated at Oscar has risen to the maximum level. If him and his film has been honored in many industry awards, I really wonder what happened with AMPAS members; probably we will never know for sure but it is very strange when many -especially Guilds- honor him and he was unable to get enough votes to get an Oscar nomination.

Really glad that Searching for Sugar Man and Malik Bendjelloul are winning "everything" -well, almost all documentary awards in festivals and seasonal awards- as will not get tired of saying that is the best documentary I have seen "ever" (up to this year).

Winners are in *BLUE. To check winners in non-film categories go here.

1/8/13
A few minutes ago the DGA announced the five nominees for current edition of the guild awards and on Saturday, February 2 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom will be the awards ceremony that will include honoring documentary films which will be announced on January 14 –will modify post to include these nominations-.

DGA President Taylor Hackford commented: "DGA members have chosen an incredibly rich and varied group of filmmakers to nominate for this year's Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film Award. These directors represent the highest standard of filmmaking, and their films are a testament to artistic achievement, innovative storytelling and the passion that filmmakers share with their audiences. Being nominated by their peers is what makes this award particularly meaningful for directors, and I congratulate all of the nominees for their outstanding work."

Feature Film Award
*Ben Affleck for Argo
Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
Tom Hooper for Les Misérables
Ang Lee for Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg for Lincoln

Documentary Award
*Malik Bendjelloul for Seaching For Sugar Man
Kirby Dick for The Invisible
David France for How To Survive A Plague
Lauren Greenfield for The Queen of Versailles
Alison Klayman for Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

In the past ten years the Oscar and DGA’s nominees have coincided only twice, so can assume that what the approx. 14,500 guild members chose could be different than what total Academy members that vote for Oscar nominations could select. Most are speculating that Tom Hooper will not make it to Oscar but now I’m wondering if Steven Spielberg will get a nod. The two Anderson’s (Paul and Wes) were snubbed from these awards and now is questionable if they will get a nod. Most notable are the absence of movies from TWC. Anyway next Thursday we will learn what will happen with Oscar and how similar nods are to above ones.

To read nominees in the Directorial Team go here. On other news, Milos Forman will receive the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award and Michael Apted the Aldrich Award. Television nominees will be announced on January 9 and you can use above link to check them on or after that date.