Todd Phillips only previous Oscar nomination was as one of the five credited writers of
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Before
Joker’s remarkable success he was known exclusively for directing the comedies
Old School, Road Trip, Starsky & Hutch, and all three of
The Hangover movies. He inched his comedy more towards drama with his previous feature
War Dogs, but none of that really prepares you for the assaulting tone and style of
Joker. You need only watch
Suicide Squad for what a truly bad movie featuring this character looks like, but by jettisoning the genre constraints for this moody origin story Phillips made a gritty response to the spate of Marvel and D.C. tent poles that have dominated the marketplace in recent years. In different hands a Joker origin movie might only be competing for awards handed out by MTV or Nickelodeon, but Phillips somehow pulled off an arthouse/blockbuster hybrid. No easy feat.
It is WAY too divisive and polarizing to actually win come Oscar night as Best Director or Best Picture, but it is probably the ballsiest nom here since George Miller for
Mad Max: Fury Road. The nomination is the achievement as nothing like this has ever won before and the odds of it happening this time are beyond remote. Phoenix will walk away with Best Actor and that plus maybe one other technical award may be it for the film’s eleven nominations, which lead the pack. But even without a bag full of Oscars this movie has made its mark.
Martin Scorsese was already the most-nominated living director, second all time.
The Irishman makes his ninth Oscar nom for Best Director added to
Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Hugo, and
The Wolf of Wall Street. Spielberg and Woody Allen each have seven nominations a piece and Marty needs three more to tie William Wyler for the most ever at twelve. Scorsese’s only win is for
The Departed, of all things. He won't win again here, but his epic return to the gangster genre with DeNiro and Pesci is a triumph. Marty's next project is the adaptation of the non-fiction bestseller
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI which will pair his two most oft-used leading men Bobby DeNiro and Leo DiCaprio and may well bring him back for his tenth nod from The Academy.
This makes the third Best Director nomination for
Quentin Tarantino following
Pulp Fiction (Robert Zemeckis won for
Forest Gump) and
Inglourious Basterds (Kathryn Bigelow won for
The Hurt Locker). He has two wins for his screenplays (
Pulp Fiction and
Django Unchained), and this marks the fourth time his films have been nominated for Best Picture (
Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). Despite having legions of fans and an undeniable brand name in the industry he has not won Best Director. He has an outside shot of sneaking in for his ode to the intersection of culture and danger in 1969 Los Angeles, probably his best shot at actually winning since
Pulp Fiction. But while the Academy admires Tarantino's signature style they may never crown him Best Director. Hitchcock and Kubrick never won competitive Oscars for direction but that does not diminish their influence and legacy. Tarantino may remain in their company, which is a badge he's probably more comfortable wearing. Proudly.
Bong Joon-Ho's nod for
Parasite is the thirty-first time the helmer of a foreign language film has been nominated as Best Director and the tenth this century. Bong is the first Korean and fourth Asian filmmaker nominated following Hiroshi Teshigahara and
Woman in the Dunes (1965), Akira Kurosawa for
RAN (1985), and Ang Lee for
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. To date the only winner of a foreign language film was Alfonso Cuarón just last year for
Roma.
Parasite has the Best International Feature Film Oscar in the bag. Bong may manage the win for Original Screenplay but seems like a true longshot for Best Picture, meaning he would need a Picture/Director split here. Splits used to be pretty damn rare, there are only twenty-six all time. But eight of them have come in the 2000s and five in the past decade alone: Ang Lee for
Life of Pi/
Argo for Picture, Alfonso Cuarón for
Gravity/
12 Years a Slave Best Picture, Alejandro González Iñárritu for
The Revenant/
Spotlight for Picture, Damien Chazelle for
La La Land/
Moonlight Picture, and last year Cuarón for
Roma/
Green Book for Picture. It seems in danger of becoming the norm. Not sure if this is due to the increased sophistication of the voting base being able to distinguish award-worthy directorial flourishes that may not be tied to the quality of the overall film or simply the run-off, preferential balloting in the Best Picture category? Either way it is a trend that cannot be ignored. It has become a toss-up whether the Best Director and Best Picture will match and it used to be this side of a foregone conclusion.
The favorite for Best Picture is
1917 meaning
Sam Mendes would be in line to win here minus a split. His only other nomination was when he won for
American Beauty twenty years ago. That was his feature debut. He has made seven features since then:
Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Away We Go, the Bond pics
Skyfall and
Spectre, and now
1917. If he wins he will become only the twenty-second filmmaker to win multiple Oscars for direction and would join Spielberg, Eastwood, Iñárritu, Cuarón, Ang Lee, and Oliver Stone as the only six living artists with a pair of wins (John Ford remains seemingly untouchable with his four career wins).
The DGA Awards are revealed this coming Sunday and that will either confirm Mendes as the favorite or give us a hint at who the potential Oscar splitter may be.