Hey, lovelies. Beau here, with the announcement of the DGA Nominees for 2013 whilst Nathaniel lunches with one of them.
- Ben Affleck, Argo
- Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
- Tom Hooper, Les Miserables
- Ang Lee, Life of Pi
- Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
And so, the open spot goes to Tom Hooper, a recent recipient a couple years back for his work on The King’s Speech. If anything must be said about Les Miserables, it is that it is indeed a director’s vision; the intimacy of the camera superseding the largeness of the story in an effort to maximize the full emotional impact of the musical.
While I have many issues with the film, Hooper’s vision does lend itself well to Hathaway’s ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, the strongest scene in the film. Observing despair and bottling it in a shot that would have made Bergman proud, his attention to detail in Hathaway makes for something profoundly intimate and personal. That the rest of the film never lives up to this moment is not really surprising; its pacing and its reticence to self-edit do it a disservice, as the film never really gives its audience a moment to breathe and take in the considerable emotional toll.
That being said, this is the lineup many have been predicting for quite some time now, give or take Hooper in place of Russell or Tarantino. We’ll just have to see if Oscar feels the same way come Thursday morning.
Until then, dears. xo, Beau