Podcast: Oscar's Self Destruction, Guild Prizes, and Sundance Winners

with Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl 

 In this episode Murtada and Nathaniel sound off on Sundance buzz, and the current madness of the awards race and Oscar's late-life identity crisis and one shockingly ill-thought-out decision after the next, ad infinitum.

Index (58 minutes)
00:01 Sundance buzz: The Farewell, Clemency, One Child Nation, Them That Follow , and The Report
17:25 Recent guild prizes: Bryan Singer & Rami Malek's Bohemian Rhapsody and how everything keeps going wrong this awards season.
22:34 Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade's surprise DGA win
26:00 Oscar's identity crisis and its increasingly terrible decisions. Murtada tries to talk Nathaniel off the ledge.
36:00 Spike Lee and Bradley Cooper at the DGAs and guilds confusion about Best Picture
45:40 Trying to survive Oscar's dwindling sense of self and we're back to Sundance to talk about next year's Oscar possibilities, especially in regards to Clemency
56:00 Annie Awards and wrap-up

Referenced in the Podcast
• Nathaniel's "Awards Season is Killing Me" Rant
• DGA winners
• Murtada's Sundance Coverage

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Sundance Glory / Oscar Doom

DGA: The Spikes (Jonze & Lee), Bradley Cooper's Loss, and the Gowns (yes, the gowns)

by Nathaniel R

The big news coming out of the weekend's DGA ceremony was not Alfonso Cuarón's second win from the Director's Guild (he previously took the DGA for Gravity and had won nearly every award of note for Roma, making a repeat a foregone deal). Instead it was Bradley Cooper's surprise loss for First Time Feature A Star is Born and Spike Lee's speeches, which inevitably have a way of shaking up a room because Spike Lee always says what he has to say, unapologetically. The best element of the non-televised DGA ceremony is that they make a big deal of the nominees and not just the winner, giving all 5 top nominees a moment at the mic and a presentation of their nomination in medal form...

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DGA nominees match the Globe lineup *exactly*

by Nathaniel R

This awards season keeps throwing us unpleasant curveballs. First Bohemian Rhapsody took the top prize at the Globes and now, the Director's Guild of America has decided to up and agree with the Globes exactly on the Best Director list.

Their nominations and statistical hand-wringing after the jump...

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Del Toro's last stop before Oscar

by Nathaniel R

Last night Guillermo del Toro took his expected win at the Directors Guild Awards. Next stop: the 90th Academy Awards where he's also expected to claim his trophy. No one else in the Best Director field has enough momentum or goodwill to upset him, particularly given that the DGA prize is historically super predictive of the eventual Oscar win. They only seem to stray when they're making a "statement"...

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Directors Guild Nominations - Greta & Jordan, Yay!

by Nathaniel R

This year's 70th annual DGA Awards will be held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 3rd a month before the Oscars. The winner for Directing in Theatrical Features usually goes on to win the Oscar though historically there's about one exception a decade (Ben Affleck for Argo, Rob Marshall for Chicago, Ron Howard for Apollo 13,  etcetera-- basically don't have the "oh" sound in your movie title!-- did not repeat their wins at the Oscars and some of them weren't even nominated for the Academy Award). 

This year's lucky five nominees -- statistically you can expect four of them to pop up again with Oscar -- are:

THEATRICAL FEATURE

• Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
• Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
• Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards...
• Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
• Jordan Peele, Get Out

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