Oscar Volley: Those DGA Nominees (and more) in Best Director

Our Oscar Volleys series is down to our last two categories. Here are Tim Brayton and Eric Blume to talk Best Director. (This volley was recorded before the BAFTA announcement but since those nominations are juried they probably won't have much bearing on Oscar outcomes.)

Eric Blume:  Tim, I'm thrilled to talk shop about the Best Director category. Let's start with Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve, and Kenneth Branagh who all seem unlikely to miss.  I'm personally thrilled that Campion might ride her crest all the way to a win. Nobody else could have made The Power of the Dog work so layered and subtle, or told that story without it seeming heavy-handed, obvious, or silly. The film gives Campion the chance to do her specialty: embroiling us in a narrative and in character motivations so intensely strange yet fully human that we're transported by our own confusion and curiosity.  She has that special ability to deliver a rare grounded sense of whatthefuckery in her movies. There are moments where so much is happening psychologically, where so many meanings are transpiring simultaneously, that you can't even fully process it until it's passed you by.

I'm also a huge fan of Villeneuve, a natural-born filmmaker if there ever was one...

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DGA Nominees: Anderson, Branagh, Campion, Spielberg, Villeneuve

by Nathaniel R

And now the 'super thursday' of Guild Awards comes to an end with the Directors Guild of America nominations. The Directors Guild has historically been the best 'predictor' as to the Best Picture lineup though that distinction ceased being really important in 2009 when Oscar expanded its Best Picture lineup. Since then we've only seen one DGA Feature Film nominee that didnt show up in Oscar's Best Picture list (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) though we've several several DGA nominees who didn't show up in the parallel Oscar list for Best Director. Make sense? Okay, let's discuss their nominees...

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Oscar charts: The more interesting than we were expecting it to be "Best Director" race

by Nathaniel R

The annual competition for Best Director at the Oscars is in a very interesting era. The Academy has become increasingly international so, in theory, we can expect more international figures to pop up in this category rather than just the superstar auteurs. Though it's long had the same racial problems as the acting categories it's always had those in a much less visible way... until recently. And it wasn't all that long ago that people (or, more specifically, the media) didn't grouse about no women being up for the prize. The movement for equity behind the camera only went truly mainstream in the past decade. Female directors have always been around, of course, if not in the same numbers they are today it's a topic Juan Carlos is currently investigating as he moves backwards in time through the Oscar years in his series "Through Her Lens" (new episode drops tomorrow).

For the first time in history we could be looking at a second consecutive win by a female auteur since Jane Campion is currently the favourite for The Power of the Dog. But who else will join her in the lineup? 

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Tweetweek

Accurate, this!

seems like the pandemic is structured like buffy the vampire: each season has a lot of mini crises but is about one big bad. (new Variant, etc) by that logic does will the series finale will find us sinking into a hole in the earth as the hellmouth consumes us? plz, yes. hurry.

— Allison P Davis (@AllisonPDavis) December 16, 2021

After the jump many more curated tweets including reactions to Time's Person of the Year, Spider-Man No Way Home, various awards things, and relatable and/or amusing tweets...

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Dune, review: when a dream comes true

by Elisa Giudici

Dreams are messages from the deep. This line from Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's SF novel perfectly describes the seductive dangerous power of dream we've cherished for a very long time begin to come true. Villeneuve is one of many directors of a generation that grew up reading Frank Herbert visionary sci-fi novels about messianic leadership and predestination, colonization and contamination of an alien world and culture, and the dangers of mixing politics and religion (to name only a few of the main themes of the Dune novels).

He was well aware of how insidious it can be to work on something that's long been on the back of your mind and your abmition for decades. "I talked for hours with Hans Zimmer about the possibility (a long time dream for both of us), trying to understand if it wasn't advisable to let our dream remain in our heads"...

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