dga awards Tagged Articles at Cinematical

As further proof that it's Slumdog Millionaire's world and we're all just living in it, Danny Boyle won the Directors Guild of America prize Saturday night. Slumdog, nominated for 10 Oscars, was already named best picture by the Producers Guild of America, and it could still win a Writers Guild award, too. Oh, and then there are the Oscars, where it's the front runner to win Best Picture.

All of the guilds are fairly good predictors of the Oscars (the guilds' memberships overlap quite a bit with the Academy voters), but none more so than the DGA. In the guild's 61 years of prize-giving, all but six recipients have gone on to win their respective Oscars. So if I were a betting man, I'd put money on Boyle's name being announced on Oscar night.

But with Slumdog now having won the PGA award and the DGA award, surely you are asking yourself: How often has the same film won both awards? And does that mean it's bound to win the Oscar for Best Picture, too?

The short answer is yes. In the 19 years that the PGA has given out awards, it has matched the DGA award 13 times. And of those 13 double-winners, 10 have gone on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. (The three exceptions were Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and Brokeback Mountain.) Ergo, if I'm a betting man, I'm looking at Slumdog.

In other DGA award news, Ari Folman won the documentary prize for Waltz with Bashir, which is nominated for an Oscar, too ... but in the foreign-language category, not documentary. So you're on your own for predicting that one.

The Coen Bros. took top honors last night at the DGA awards ceremony for their film No Country for Old Men, beating out Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), Sean Penn (Into the Wild), Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) and Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Statistically, this usually means there's a pretty good chance Joel and Ethan Coen will win the Oscar as well, however that's not guaranteed. Last time these guys were up for a best directing Oscar, it was 1996 and the film was Fargo. That year, they won for original screenplay but didn't take home the best director statue. You can listen to the Coen Bros. acceptance speech, as well as the press conference backstage over at The Envelope.

photo courtesy of The Envelope

For the second time in as many years, the Director's Guild of America, which represents not only directors but unit production managers and assistant directors, has said no to the Hollywood studio's policy of for-consideration screeners being mailed to its members for the 60th annual Director's Guild Awards. This decision finally puts to rest the question left form last year when the Guild said it would not allow screeners for the 59th annual awards but might consider them for the 60th -- which take place on January 26th.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, for the 59th Awards, the Guild initially indicated that it would allow screeners to be made available to its members. But then, almost immediately afterward, reversed the decision. At the time, it did allow for the possibility of screeners being sent out to members for this year's awards but now that's obviously not going to happen. "The DGA recognizes that this decision is different from what was stated last year," the Guild said in the article, "However, closer examination of the issue revealed concern among members that films sent out on DVD might have an unfair advantage over films that were not able to be sent out due to limited marketing budgets or other financial considerations."

Ok, I guess those reasons make sense. Still, as a member of the Director's Guild, I always felt it was an unusual policy to not allow screening copies as virtually every other union or guild does allow it. In addition to the reasons stated above, maybe the ban is meant to help stem the tide of pirated DVDs being sold all over the world? Or, perhaps the Guild actually expects its members to go see films under consideration in a movie theater instead of on DVD? Or maybe it's because the DGA just likes to be different? I don't know, but whatever the reason, even if we don't get screeners mailed to us, at least we still get to see screenings of films at DGA HQ, which is nice. So I guess I shouldn't complain too much.