Following DGA on oscarwatch.com
Best director is coming up.
This Saturday night the Directors Guild will hand out its top award. It's always a difficult night for Oscarwatchers because we wait patiently for news. The winner will be announced latewards of 10 p.m.
The DGA's winner almost always goes on to win the Oscar, though there have been a few notable exceptions. Ang Lee won everything for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for Traffic. Even Soderbergh was aghast at the decision but he made a graceful speech nonetheless. If you all remember correctly there was a whisper campaign, an email campaign and general wave to win Soderbergh the Oscar when it was looking like he was canceling himself out with his duel noms for Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Voters finally decided to put their weight behind one film to win the director the award. Many out there, though, thought it should have been Mr. Lee's to lose.
If Ang Lee loses the DGA again this year it will hook the plot and spin it in another direction, giving another film the momentum it needs to take the baby home.
It's impossible to imagine, however, anyone but Lee winning.Brokeback Mountain is easily the best directed film of the bunch; it is the most courageous, the most elegant, the most beautiful. The way Lee works with actors ought to be reason enough, but it's more than that. His gift with illustrating lonely hearts with vast, empty yet breathtaking landscapes is astonishing, especially when it involves tall and powerful mountains which seem to be both a haven for the two leads as well as judgment from on high.
(I gotta admit I stole that landscape line from someone who recently summed up Lee's visual talents that way ... well, you know, we take 'em where we can get 'em - and if you can't fix it, you have to stand it).
The two that seem to be waiting in line are George Clooney for his brilliant Good Night, and Good Luck - a perfect film that launches Clooney in the big leagues. And Paul Haggis for Crash, the only other movie to break hearts and draw tears in the DGA lineup.
Bennett Miller and Steven Spielberg will have a harder time and ought to be considered dark horses at this point, with one possible scenario unfolding. If, by chance, people feel sympathy for Spielberg and want to "send a message" to the rest of the world in support of his "prayer for peace," it is possible Spielberg could win and thus making Munich the player everyone prematurely thought it would be.
But it's Lee's for the taking for my money. We will be at our laptops bringing the news as it unfolds.