Categories One-by-One: Best Director

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OscarGuy
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Post by OscarGuy »

First, let's scratch this whole Hooper's a neophyte argument. He has three highly successful, and award-winning, films for television and has directed before on the big screen even if it was only The Damned United. Rob Marshall this guy ain't.

But, I can support some of Tee's theories. My predictions for 2000 were Lee for Best Director, but only after the DGA win, and I had Gladiator down for Best Picture in late December. But, in 2001, A Beautiful Mind became my final prediction for Picture and Director in late March, right before the Oscars. So, it wasn't unexpected for Howard and A Beautiful Mind to win even if seemingly last-minute.
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Post by Okri »

When I started writing this the first time, I was ready give my reasons why I was predicting Fincher. Essentially, if I remove the films from the equation and say FILM A, FILM B, etc, it comes up to a Hooper win every time.

a) 2001 seemed to have so many possibilities. Altman as a career win, Opie for being a Hollywood icon, Lynch because he's cool and wierd (an oscar bait hook if there ever was one :D ), Jackson because he saw his ambition taken to the screen and had those rave reviews/box office. Of course, Opie won. They went with the best picture winner despite everything.

Similarly, they have Aronofsky, Fincher, O'Russell and the Coens, all who really have their partisans. And then you have Hooper. Of course, ten films means no odd-man out, but you've got four pretty hard core auteurs against the bland man....

b) With 2002, we wondered if Scorsese would FINALLY get his win. Sure, Chicago was sweeping it's way towards oscar, but Marshall was a neophyte (like Hooper) against a respected vet (like...Fincher*). And Gangs of New York had a few wins we could expect: song, art direction, Day-Lewis.

Of course, we know what happened: nothing for Scorsese, nothing for Gangs. Goes down as one of the biggest losers in Oscar history. Now, Hollywood guilds have already made VERY clear that they don't like The Social Network. Hell, that awkwardness at SAG made that clear. So the rude awakening occured earlier.

c) Damien nailed it: just how respected IS Fincher anyway? I mean, he has two nominations, but they're for his least disctinctive/Fincher-esque movies. That puts him on par with... someone like Gus van Sant. There just doesn't seem to be THAT strong a feeling about him. It doesn't help that he eschews sentiment and has seemingly played down the impact of The Social Network (he really seemed surprised at the film of the decade reviews).

d) Does it hurt that The Social Network seems so obviously a writer's movie? Does that take away from the auteur factor? When you look at picture/director splits, the winning director always seems more of an auteur (Lee over Haggis, Soderbergh over Scott, Spielberg over Madden, Polanski over Marshall, though yeah - The Pianist won screnplay). That head/heart divide. But given that what people seem to take away (regardless of their affection for the fillm) is the zingy writing, I wonder if that subtracts from Fincher's achievement. If so, that would be disappointing; I think Fincher has a better handle on how this story should be told.

e) So, I think it's Aronofsky's to lose. Ah, who am I kidding. That would be way too awesome. Hooper it is.
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Post by ITALIANO »

Damien wrote:
anonymous wrote:One sure sign I think that Tom Hooper will win Director later in the evening is if The King's Speech wins either Cinematography or Film Editing.
The King's Speech won't win either of these, but if it loses Costume Design to Alice in Wonderland or Art Direction to Alice In Wonderland then we're in for an interesting night.
Exactly what I meant.

And if The King's Speech wins Best Cinematography, it won't just win Best Picture this year - it will also win next year, and the year after, etc.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Addressing a few things:

Sabin, Woody Allen was predicted to win best director not because people saw Annie Hall as particularly a directorial feat (as I said, people didn't think that way in those days: best director was mostly an adjunct to best picture). He was the pick solely because he had (shockingly) won the DGA award, and everyone knew the stats so they went ahead and predicted him (the same way they did for Ang Lee in 2000 despite his film being in a seemingly prohibitive foreign language).

BJ, I think 2001 predictions were across the board mostly because they followed the chaotic result of 2000 (and, to a smaller degree, the Shakespeare in Love upset two years prior). For a brief (wishful) moment, people -- me included -- indulged in the fantasy that all the predictive rules had gone out the window, so any wisp of hope -- like Altman winning the Globe -- was inflated into full-blown possibility. The Howard/Beautiful Mind win brought us crashing back to earth...

...only to have us float back up again with the equally oddball (and totally unexpected) late-evening upsets of 2002. Having, in two years out of three, DGA contradictions, as well as results that didn't seem to fit together (best director and screenplay does not equal best picture?), seemed to widen the range of Oscar outcomes, no matter what the pre-season prizes had decreed.

It was in this context that 2004 brought its wide variety of predictions. It's true: there were Aviator/Eastwood and Million Dollar/Scorsese splits predicted (as well as a few Sideways best picture calls mixed in). But I don't know why your quotee would ever have assumed a split was inevitable. The previous years had seemed to show splits were more possible than previously assumed, but there was nothing about that year that made me think a film/director match couldn't happen. In fact, in keeping with my usual DGA adherence, I went double-Eastwood all the way.

I also went Ang Lee/Crouching Tiger in 2000, and was wrong two ways. But I was in a deep minority going that direction: nearly everyone I surveyed that year grudgingly went DGA for Lee, but Gladiator was a broadly predicted best picture. Which makes me question your characterization of it as a weak candidate. Despite Scott not being recognized, the film was mostly seen as a lock.

To me, the only real difference between Gladiator and King's Speech is the DGA win (and I'm not saying that's a tiny variance -- my whole thesis here is, it might be enough to offset everything else). You could even say Gladiator had had a stronger run-up, winning best film from Broadcasters and the Globes. King's Speech had literally won nothing prior to its three-Guild run, and Hooper nothing since. I can't think of a film whose success has been so finely contained and yet was viewed as a potential sweeper.

I do agree that this will make the tech awards major portents. They're almost all highly contested anyway, and we'll be ooohing over each result, trying to guess what they say about the evening's ultimate conclusions.
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Post by Damien »

anonymous wrote:One sure sign I think that Tom Hooper will win Director later in the evening is if The King's Speech wins either Cinematography or Film Editing.

The King's Speech won't win either of these, but if it loses Costume Design or Art Direction to Alice In Wonderland then we're in for an interesting night.

As for Best Director, obviously it's a toss-up, but my gut says Fincher, as Social Network is "more directed" than King's Speech (and even if they wisely like King's Speech more than Social Network, they still do like Social).

The one thing that helps Hooper's chances is tat it's unclear to what level of esteem David Fincher is held within the community. Sure, the fan boys have loved him since Seven, bur do Academy members really consider him one of them own, the way they do Ron Howard? Who even thinks about Benjamin Button, and that was only 2 years ago? And Fight Club is hardly a movie that's going to show up in one of Chuck Workman's clip montages.




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Post by anonymous1980 »

One sure sign I think that Tom Hooper will win Director later in the evening is if The King's Speech wins either Cinematography or Film Editing.
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Post by ITALIANO »

I have no idea. I mean, Hooper is the favorite, if only because The King's Speech seems to be adored by the Academy and film/director splits are possible but aren't that frequent. Still, The Social Network, though obviously not loved - and it's not the kind of movie one "loves" by the way - is clearly respected, admired even, and respect and admiration are exactly the kind of feelings that, while preventing a movie from winning Best Picture, can lead to a Best Director win. Ask Warren Beatty.

We will know quite early in the evening if The King's Speech is going to be so big. Some awards which are conventionally considered minor will be extremely important this time - and I'm not referring (only) to Best Editing, which is always important but this year could be less meaningful than usual. But anyway, even if The Kings Speech wins everything in sight - which it won't - the Social Network fans (and Lauren Bacall isn't the only one, I'm sure) won't let the Best-American-Movie-Since-Schindler's-List (poor American cinema) go home with just one Oscar. All those endless critics' awards haven't been forgotten so quickly.

Yet, my prediction is still Tom Hooper.
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Post by Sabin »

(anonymous @ Feb. 18 2011,3:19)
You're probably trying to prepare yourself emotionally so you won't be getting your hopes up and be too disappointed because that's what your personality dictates.

Wow. Thanks, Chief.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Sabin wrote:In 1998, Saving Private Ryan was seen as damn near a mortal lock, and a split happened.
I wasn't on the internet predicting the Oscars at the time though I was following them closely but not to toot my own horn but I had a feeling that it was going to be a split and I was kind of surprised that Shakespeare in Love winning was seen as some sort of shock. I knew in my heart of hearts that it would happen.
There's no real reason to believe that Tom Hooper won't win Best Director.


The fact that he lost the BAFTA to David Fincher is one fairly good enough reason to believe that it's a possibility. I mean, Tom Hooper is more well-known in Britain, he is a Brit himself and the film is British plus it won most everything else and then some (Rush, Bonham-Carter) yet it gave Best Director to Fincher. That's a good that it's at least a possibility.

You're probably trying to prepare yourself emotionally so you won't be getting your hopes up and be too disappointed because that's what your personality dictates.
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Post by FilmFan720 »

The thing about 2002 is that it followed this year, but only at a later point in the race. Polanski's win (and the screenplay win, and Brody's win) was pointed at as being a late-run surge for the film. The popular thought at the time, right after the awards, were that if ballots had gone out a week later than the film would have trumped Chicago for the Best Picture prize. Chicago had been the frontrunner all season, and had everything it seemingly needed to run the top 2 categories, but then stumbled and barely crossed the finish line.

This year, we have had the same thing (a "darker," strong frontrunner all season, and a period piece that comes in at the last minute to take the mantle), only The King's Speech has managed to time its surge a lot better. It has proved strong enough to topple the Best Picture prize, but doesn't have the canonical auteur at its helm that The Pianist has (but will take some of the same awards: Best Screenplay and Best Actor).

That all said, I have no idea who is winning Best Director.
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Post by The Original BJ »

I'd have started some of these threads as well, except I've been out of town for two weeks, so my online time has been limited. Though, truth be told, that's not the only reason -- I feel myself growing less and less interested in this whole thing, despite liking a lot of the movies nominated. Maybe it's the utter monotony of a lot of the races (you realize that if Natalie Portman wins Best Actress, not only will it be her umpteenth speech this year, it will be one of many times she has received her award from Jeff Bridges!) Or maybe it's the fact that I have little desire to watch the Social Network/Fincher train get derailed by an utterly forgettable effort like King's Speech.

Along those lines, I think, unfortunately Tom Hooper will win Best Director, based on the theory that when a Best Picture candidate is strong enough, its director usually doesn't lose.

One recent year widely predicted to have a split that no one's mentioned so far is 2004, where I remember plenty of Aviator/Eastwood AND M$B/Scorsese predictions. A commentator on a recent Film Experience podcast made an interesting remark regarding that ceremony: that he predicted M$B/Scorsese, but that when Eastwood won Director, he assumed Aviator would then win Best Picture, because thought there would HAVE to be a split vote between these top two (very-close) contenders. But, in the end, voters liked Million Dollar Baby the best, and it was strong enough to win both prizes.

Ditto 2001. That year's predictions were all over the place. Many went for A Beautiful Mind in Picture, but opted for Altman or Jackson in Director. Others, like Roger Ebert, assumed Hollywood-favorite Howard would get his Director prize, but predicted against the the film prevailing as Best Picture. (Ebert went with PGA-winner Moulin Rouge, others -- including myself -- thought nomination-leader Rings would triumph.) But, despite four films having some play in the top two categories, and all sorts of predicted combos, frontrunner A Beautiful Mind was strong enough to carry Picture AND Director.

It's also worth noting that most of the films to have won Picture but not Director in recent years have been fairly weak candidates. I don't mean this qualitatively -- though it certainly applies to Gladiator and Crash -- but more that they weren't strong front-runners. Why? Because a lot of their directors -- Madden, Scott, Haggis -- weren't in the race AT ALL. Had King's Speech won PGA & SAG, but missed DGA, we'd all assume Fincher had a lock on Best Director, but that King's Speech, with its 12 nominations and some key Guild wins, could definitely upset in Best Picture.

But with the DGA prize we've gone from "Does The King's Speech have any chance at winning Best Picture?" to "The King's Speech is winning Best Picture," (surprisingly quickly, I might add.) I don't think too many people will go out on a limb and predict Social Network for the top prize at this point. Doesn't it seem like a front-runner that solid will likely carry along its director?

The one major recent exception to this theory would be, of course, Chicago, which was fairly unanimously predicted to win Best Picture, but whose director failed despite winning the DGA. (An amusing exchange on that Film Experience podcast went along the lines of, "Well, but Roman Polanski was a beloved veteran filmmaker"/"But, on the other hand, David Fincher isn't a child molester.") I can't say that a Fincher victory would surprise me the way Polanski's did (I hadn't even CONSIDERED that outcome as a possibility), but there's far more precedent for a Hooper victory, no?

God, I hate the Oscars sometimes.
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Post by OscarGuy »

I switched to Tom Hooper based on the DGA win and while I would be all about another director winning, I can't get away from the feeling that Tom Hooper's going to win it.

In those years where the DGA failed to predict the Oscar outcome, they didn't pick an terrible director. Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Ang Lee, Rob Marshall. Perhaps Howard and Marshall might be considered weaker directors in the grand scheme of things, but their films were certainly accomplishments. The King's Speech just doesn't feel like an accomplishment.

But, if we're comparing resumes to Hooper, he doesn't have a poor track record. Rob Marshall had never directed a big screen effort before and had done nothing but filmed stage adaptations previously. And since the 2002 race is probably the closest modern analogy we can look at (at least with a consistent voter base), I don't know that it's a great comparison. But mostly, this feels like a case of Chariots of Fire vs. Reds. But even in that case, the DGA went with Beatty.

I would say that today, more than ever, being a television director isn't a penalty. Hooper's first miniseries, Elizabeth I, received 13 Emmy nominations and won 9. Hooper was one of those winners. The next year, his Longford was nominated only for 5 and won none of them. Then 2 years later, he made John Adams. It received 23 Emmy nominations and won 13. Hooper did not win, but it's still an impressive total. He's directed some prominent actors to Emmy wins and is likely to yield one, possibly two, Oscar wins in acting. He's going to be given a lot of credit for this and with that many award nominations and wins under his belt, I don't see him in the same light as I do other minor directors whose beloved films won Best Picture and they lost Best Director.
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Post by Sabin »

(Mister Tee @ Feb. 17 2011,6:31)
Sabin, to add to your "the split never happens when and how you expect" list:

1977: In the wake of Rocky, Annie Hall seemed WAY too cool a movie to win best picture, so many predicted a Star Wars/Woody split.

...shut up. People really predicted that Woody Allen was going to win Best Director over Herbert Ross and George Lucas? That's crazy to me. If anything, I would imagine that people would liken it to a piece of writing and performance but not directing, which is of course asinine because (especially in Annie Hall) one cannot divorce his acting from his directing. Except for maybe in the editing room where it became an entirely different picture. Here's hoping this means The Social Network is in for a great night.

(Mister Tee @ Feb. 17 2011,6:31)
1981: Lots of us noticed Reds' weakness, and a friend of mine said he'd go out on a limb and predict the rare split. His best picture call: On Golden Pond.

Wrong split. And you know what? I would have predicted the exact same thing.

(Mister Tee @ Feb. 17 2011,6:31)
1985: After the DGA craziness, there were not a few predicting The Color Purple for best film, and, since Spielberg was unavailable in directing, John Huston there.

That must have been a very exciting night to watch. And a very depressing night to be Steven Spielberg.

(Mister Tee @ Feb. 17 2011,6:31)
The one year where a fair number of people accurately called the split was 1989. I actually called a split myself, but, thinking no film without a directing nod could ever win, went with My Left Foot. Many, however, rightly saw it as Daisy/Stone, and that would be the best precedent for King's/Fincher this year.

Except that Tom Hooper is nominated.

I don't entirely understand how the Driving Miss Daisy win happened. I would have chosen My Left Foot, but Driving Miss Daisy is a lovely film that just so happened to be released in the same year as myriad bracing, vitriolic superior films (Do the Right Thing, Drugstore Cowboy, sex, lies, and videotape come immediately to mind for precedent if not quality; one could assert Crimes and Misdemeanors as equally outstanding) so it's legacy is one of retrograde, especially in the year of Glory which is kind of a Born on the Fourth of July/Do the Right Thing/Driving Miss Daisy-hybrid, but somehow safer and whiter than all of them.

Daisy won the Golden Globe for Comedy/Musical which is strange to me because When Harry Met Sally... would seem the likelier choice (don't know what happened to that film come awards time) but also because it's not a comedy. It went three for three, failed to get a Director's Guild nomination, led the nominees on Oscar morning and without a Best Director nom. Some of them like Art Direction, Costume Design, and Film Editing (!!!) would indicate that it was the front-runner regardless of Bruce Beresford's omission.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Sabin, to add to your "the split never happens when and how you expect" list:

1977: In the wake of Rocky, Annie Hall seemed WAY too cool a movie to win best picture, so many predicted a Star Wars/Woody split.

1981: Lots of us noticed Reds' weakness, and a friend of mine said he'd go out on a limb and predict the rare split. His best picture call: On Golden Pond.

1985: After the DGA craziness, there were not a few predicting The Color Purple for best film, and, since Spielberg was unavailable in directing, John Huston there.

The one year where a fair number of people accurately called the split was 1989. I actually called a split myself, but, thinking no film without a directing nod could ever win, went with My Left Foot. Many, however, rightly saw it as Daisy/Stone, and that would be the best precedent for King's/Fincher this year.
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Post by Sabin »

Similarly, I will be predicting a win for Tom Hooper on these grounds:

Splits between Picture/Director almost never go as exactly predicted.

Since I started watching the Academy Awards in 1995, there have been five instances where a Picture/Director split was widely predicted, and not a single one went as predicted.

In 1995, a split was widely predicted between Apollo 13 and Mel Gibson because Howard wasn't nominated. This resulted in the surprise Best Picture winner Braveheart.

In 1998, Saving Private Ryan was seen as damn near a mortal lock, and a split happened.

In 2000, few thought that Ridley Scott would win Best Director but the winner was widely predicted to be Ang Lee. Unless I'm off, the possibilities were largely predicted to be either Crouching Tiger for Picture and Director or Gladiator for Picture and Lee for Director. A split was predicted. We got a different one. I'm less certain it was a calculated move to split the wealth rather than Soderbergh being publicly nominated twice.

Some called a split in 2001 and it didn't happen. No reason to. They liked the picture, they picked the same director. You can say that Howard has a stronger track record than Tom Hooper, but we'll see how far that goes.

Similarly in 2002, it was either going to be Chicago and Marshall or Chicago and Scorsese. We got a split. It was a different one. This would imply a greater love for The Pianist and an understanding of the choices that Polanski made in telling the story. I don't like to give the Academy too much credit though. This would feed somewhat into Gladiator not being taken too seriously as a directing contender as it was seen more as a "production" rathe than a singular achievement.

I predicted the 2005 split for Crash/Lee. I did it because nobody I knew had seen Brokeback Mountain. I don't want to chalk it up to "Fine. Ang Lee can have his Oscar, but it's not the best picture of the year." but that may well be it.

2006 was completely up in the air. I don't recall The Departed being an easy call for Picture and Director. There were calls for Babel and Little Miss Sunshine just as much if not more so. I know I predicted Little Miss Sunshine. But no split occurred. Both Babel and Little Miss Sunshine are films that exist outside the periphery of Hollywood and failed to generate half the business of one of their own.

There's no real reason to believe that Tom Hooper won't win Best Director. When both chief contenders are nominated for Picture and Director, they tend to nominate the more singular and publicized achievement for Directing and the more satisfying film for Picture. There isn't a huge precedent for Tom Hooper winning for directing, but The King's Speech is a stylized film and these choices resulted in a unique look for the film that clearly some are responding to. He's currently a wunderkind and there is a degree of sympathy for him because of the possibility of the Weinsteins editing the curse words out.

All I know is that whenever a split is widely predicted, it almost never happens, and when it does it's a different one. Nobody is talking about an Aronofsky upset, so I think that means The King's Speech and Tom Hooper, sadly.
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