Sunday, January 30, 2011

Tom Hooper wins the DGA...


At last night's DGA awards, The King's Speech's Tom Hooper took home the guild's best director award, giving this awards season a whole new sense of uncertainty. The DGA has a stellar track record of matching up with the Oscars, which could be bad news for David Fincher and The Social Network. Are we finally heading for the first major Oscar Best Picture upset since Crash?

For months, Hooper's film was talked about as the sort of old-fashioned type of work that would easily score a bucket-load of nominations, but walk away with few trophies come Oscar night. But in the past few weeks all of that has started to change. Sure, The Social Network scored the Golden Globe, but if you take a look at the GG's for the past few years, it's not the best sign. Recent Globe BP-Drama winners include Avatar, Slumdog Millionaire, Atonement, Babel, Brokeback Mountain, The Aviator, only one of which won best picture (Slumdog).

And even though The Social Network completely dominated the tidal wave of critics awards like The Hurt Locker, Slumdog, and No Country for Old Men, it didn't lead the way with Oscar nominations (THL and NCFOM were tied and Slumdog was #2 in its year). The Social Network score 8 nominations, but Andrew Garfield was missing in Supporting Actor and The King's Speech scored an astounding 12 nominations, which vaults it into a select group of nominated films. Hooper's DGA win either means that The King's Speech has Best Picture and Director locked up, or that this will be only the 7th time that the DGA and AMPAS have differed. Either way, expect February 27th to be a bloodbath between Speech and Social, with Black Swan, The Fighter, and Inception claiming the left overs.

No comments: