12/21/2023 0 Comments The pretenders guild![]() ![]() It’s not as if the stars or the Golden Globes, an event that worships them, don’t matter. This year star and hardware vehicles for Angelina Jolie (“Changeling”), Will Smith (“Seven Pounds”) and Nicole Kidman (“Australia”) went nowhere. When it comes to the recent Oscars, it is names like Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese and Joel and Ethan Coen that have generated most of the chatter, heat and, yes, wins, in the pageant of popularity. Not that long ago, Hollywood and its raft of awards pivoted around big movie stars, but in the last few years it is the directors who occupy the most exalted terrain, a return of sorts to the 1970s, when an American cult of auteurs began to flourish. And Danny Boyle, who made his bones on “Trainspotting,” took a riveting, location-specific approach to a love story that crisscrossed India. ![]() Gus Van Sant, a director known for his edges in movies like “Elephant” and “Last Days,” was charged with finding the universal elements in a story about a gay civil rights leader and succeeded, winning encomiums from all manner of critics. David Fincher, the director of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” has a history of idiosyncrasy that did not prevent him from doing crowd-pleasing work on a broader palette. The remaining three have credentials other than Oscar victories and huge box office returns. Many people thought that the sudden viability of “The Dark Knight” was an invention of bloggers who swirl around the awards-season process, but the validation from the directors will go a long way toward encouraging its advocates within the academy to send it into the big show’s final five. The biggest surprise among this year’s finalists is the inclusion of Christopher Nolan for “The Dark Knight” the rest have been front-running for best picture nominations for a while. The directors’ ultimate choice for best picture predicted the Oscar in six of the last seven years, a prescience few can match. And the directors have history on their side. Part of it has to do with demographics the directors are mostly white, male and older, mirroring the select group of people who get to vote for the Oscars more than most guilds do. In a way it’s only natural for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to take their lead from directors many of them do it for a living each and every day. But the Directors Guild is the more equal of equals. Yes, other guilds checked in this week, with the producers, writers and cinematographers all announcing their nominations. But if you are a serious student of contemporary Oscars if there is such a thing you would probably do no better than to take a look at the big awards news from Thursday, when the Directors Guild of America announced its picks for the five best-directed movies of the year: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Dark Knight.” All eyes are trained on Sunday night, when the Golden Globes will winnow the herd, separating the Oscar contenders from the pretenders in a hail of flashbulbs and perfect teeth and hopelessly unattainable couture.
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