Best Director Oscar 2015

I'm not sure what you're specifically referring to, but there was one thing that I thought was a bit rushed:

If you don't want to give Boyhood best picture, fine do that.

But Linklater HAS to win Best Director. He HAS to.

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Alejandro González Iñárritu just won the DGA. This throws a wrench into my Oscar picks.

Richard Linklater has already won the Golden Globe and Bafta awards, so he will win the Oscars for the Best Director.

Until the last couple weeks it seemed like Richard Linklater had this one all sewn up, but after the DGA Award went to Alejandro González Iñárritu, now it's a horse race! Will Iñárritu pull it out? Did Linklater peak too early? No matter who wins, will there be another Director/Picture split? It has been splits the past two years and has never split three years in a row in the modern era. Will it be Oscar history in the making this Sunday?

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Can't see anyone but Linklater taking this one.

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

For anyone who has about two and a half hours to spend, the DGA has put up the video of their entire Q&A event with the five DGA Award nominees, which are the same as the Oscar nominees except for Foxcatcher's Bennett Miller replacing American Sniper's Clint Eastwood.

http://www.dga.org/Events/2015/Mar2015/MTN_FF2015.aspx

My vote goes to Richard Linklater

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I initially voted for Linklater, but to be honest Iñárritu deserves it more for Birdman.


Yes, I know that it took Linklater 12 years to make Boyhood, which is a remarkable and groundbreaking feat, but Iñárritu broke ground and made something remarkable too with the whole movie looking like one long and continuous take.


It's my guess now that Iñárritu will win Best Director, Birdman will win Best Picture, and Linklater will win for Best Screenplay.






What are your thoughts on this?

As I say every year, you can bet against the DGA Award winner if you want to, and it's not a 100% perfect barometer, but it's as close as you're gonna get. The wins in Picture and Director for Birdman became a bit less of an upset after Alejandro González Iñárritu won the DGA Award a couple weeks back. The legacy of Linklater's Boyhood is secure, even without it winning the biggest Oscars it was up for, and the next couple years you gotta figure any meetings he takes with the money people in Hollywood should still have a high percentage of him securing financing for more projects. But Iñárritu is the one who gets to add "Oscar winner" to his resume.

I don't think there is any doubt that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has diversity issues to address, definitely in terms of its membership and thus a resulting votership...but you can't really knock the Director's branch for what they have done in terms of diversity, of late. This makes three years in a row with a non-White being named Best Director: Ang Lee (Life of Pi), Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity), and now Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman). And while the two previous winners before that were about as White as White can be (Englishman Tom Hooper for The King's Speech and Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist), the winner six Oscars ago was Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, the first woman to ever win Best Director.

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I know it's not exactly a trend and I'm talking about a pretty small sample size, but I love the tightly coiled films this generation of Mexican directors are churning out, and I'm really happy to see them take back to back wins in this category.

Great win, very happy for the guy, loved the speeches he gave.

And in case anyone was curious if Alejandro's use of the phrase "smells like balls" in his Best Director acceptance speech (which is a line from the film, BTW) is some sort of dubious Oscar first, it actually isn't. Those who are Academy Awards obsessives like me will remember that the legendary Cecil B. DeMIlle quipped, "This script smelled like balls, but I made the damn thing, anyway!" when the ironically named The Greatest Show on Earth won Best Picture at the 1953 Oscar ceremony.

You can look it up!

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Birdman is a superb feat of directing, a deserved win.