Every year, we have a series of conversations about which awards are better indicators/prognosticators of the Oscars. Year after year, the Golden Globes become more and more relevant, honestly, which is why it feels like the Oscar campaign team behind A Star Is Born is freaking out this week. But that being said, an even better indicator for the Oscars will always be the various guild awards – the Screenwriters Guild, the Producers Guild, SAG-AFTRA and of course the Directors Guild of America. Thankfully for A Star Is Born, the Directors Guild still loves Bradley Cooper. They just don’t love Barry Jenkins. Or women. The nominations:
Feature Film
Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born
Alfonso Cuarón, Roma
Peter Farrelly, Green Book
Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman
Adam McKay, ViceFirst-Time Feature Film
Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade
Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born
Carlos López Estrada, Blindspotting
Matthew Heineman, A Private War
Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother YouDocumentary
Morgan Neville, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
RaMell Ross, Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, Free Solo
Tim Wardle, Three Identical Strangers
Betsy West and Julie Cohen, RBG
Notable snubs for this year’s DGAs: no female directors. Last year, at least the DGAs gave a nomination to Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird. There’s also no Barry Jenkins for If Beale Street Could Talk, and no Yorgos Lanthimos for The Favorite. That being said, I’m glad it’s not a total whitewash – Spike Lee deserves the nomination for BlacKkKlansman, which is arguably his best film in a decade. The one that sticks out for me is Peter Farrelly for Green Book. I’m going to keep banging this drum – at best, you could make the argument that Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen did good work with what they were given, which was a problematic, disaster-zone script and blah, nothingburger direction.
As for the “first film” nominations…true story, I couldn’t even get through Sorry to Bother You. I watched it for about 30 minutes before turning it off. I get that some people thought it was brilliant, but from what I saw, it just seemed like hipster nonsense. I saw Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which is the Mr. Rogers documentary, and I loved that. I kind of feel like that peaked too early too, much like A Star Is Born, and now there’s momentum for Three Identical Strangers or RBG.
Note by Celebitchy: I loved Sorry to Bother You and found it so entertaining, funny and deep. It’s bizarre and can be hard to get into so I understand why Kaiser didn’t like it. It’s a clever film with a message that doesn’t hit you over the head or make you feel like you’re missing anything if you take it at face value. I would watch it again and am glad it’s getting recognition. (Thanks for letting me hijack your post Kaiser!)
Photos courtesy of WENN.
