Kathryn Bigelow's 2009 Oscar for best director — for best picture The Hurt Locker — isn't attributed to her gender.

Cenk — I distinctly recall you predicting Inglourious Basterds on your nominations show with Ben Mankiewicz (Oscar-winning Joseph's grandnephew). But what you may not know, or consider, is the powerful [long-established] trend in influence by the Directors Guild of America (which prized Bigelow on Jan. 31, two days before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominations). 

This organization (hereafter referred to as DGA) has been doling out directorial prizes for film since 1949, beginning with honors for the year 1948. In 62 individual years — including 2009 honoree Bigelow — the DGA winners have gone on to win the Oscar in all but six. Of those six who did not win the Academy Award, two of them who nabbed the DGA award were stunningly left off the Oscar nominations' list: 1985 (Steven Spielberg, The Color Purple; Sydney Pollack won the Oscar for Out of Africa) and 1995 (Ron Howard, Apollo 13; Mel Gibson took home the gold for Braveheart). As for the other four: 1968 (Anthony Harvey won the DGA award for The Lion in Winter; Carol Reed was Oscared for Oliver!); 1972 (Francis Ford Coppola won the DGA prize for The Godfather; Bob Fosse — in the year he also won a directing Emmy for NBC's Liza with a "Z" and a likewise Tony for Pippin — won the Academy Award for Cabaret); 2000 (Ang Lee won DGA's prize for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Oscar went to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic); and 2002 (Rob Marshall, the DGA winner for Chicago, lost at the Oscars to Roman Polanski for The Pianist).

The DGA and Oscar for film direction is like the states Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio in presidential elections — an all-important bellwether that foretells who'll [likely] end up on top.

The Hurt Locker won the best-film and -directing prizes from Los Angeles Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, and National Society of Film Critics. (The three frequently disagree.) This doesn't guarantee winning the Academy Award — in 1997 Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential won those prizes (and from the non-critics group National Board of Review) while losing the Oscar to James Cameron's Titanic. But then Bigelow and The Hurt Locker also scored the same prizes from Boston and Chicago. As well as the Broadcast Film Critics. Just a whole bunch of pre-Oscar awards — you can get the list from Wikipedia — came the film's way that created, in effect, a bandwagon.

When you also consider that The Hurt Locker nabbed the Oscar for film editing  — which in the past five years [2005-2009] has gone to the winner of best picture four times (exception is with 2007) — the impact of winning there (plus in sound editing and sound mixing) gave further rise to The Hurt Locker topping the likes of Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, and Up in the Air for 2009's top honor (and a total of six statuettes — two-thirds its 9 nominations).

This year's Oscars were a juggernaut —  where supporting prizes  ;for Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) and Mo'Nique (Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire) also followed suit — leading up to a fairly anti-climactic "B ig Night."

I don't argue over opinions, here. And I do apologize for being long. In fact, I didn't see any of these films. But when I listened to a post-Academy Awards The Young Turks and Cenk … it dawned on me that they were struggling to understand why The Hurt Locker won best picture, why Kathryn Bigelow won best director, and why [journalist and co-producer] Mark Boal won best original screenplay (weeks after his same prize from the Writers Guild of America).

So let's review: The Hurt Locker won from the Producers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America. The only motion picture to recently nab those key three and not win the best-picture Academy Award: Brokeback Mountain.

With the seemingl y easy best-actor and -actress wins for Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart) and Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), little of this is some sort of surprise!

by DS0816 on 03/09/2010 09:10:35 PM EST