1.
Steven Spielberg for War Horse
After some years away from Oscars, Steven Spielberg is back this year with two Oscar contenders (The Adventures of Tintin: the Secret of the Unicorn and War Horse), with the last one eyeing a solid Academy Award Best Picture nomination, which may lead Spielberg to a Best Director nod. He's one of the most respected and famous (and richest) directors working in Hollywood and in the world, and the fact he's one of the few who can make a movie that's both a blockbuster and a cinematic masterpiece. War Horse stage adaptations were very successful, all of them (both the London and Broadway's versions) and since Spielberg knows how to direct, I see him getting nominated this year. The story of the bound between a boy and a horse that's sent to the World War I, the war scenario and the beautiful technical and artistic aspects showed in the movie trailer made me realize how easy it will be for Spielberg to get the nod, because while some good movies are nominated but their directors don't, War Horse seems a successful directing achievement that combines acting directing with more no-human aspects. After being nominated for Munich in 2006, I can even see Spielberg getting home his third Best Director statue, but I don't take the risk of predicting winners... but it's Spielberg's comeback to war movies (do you remember that his Best Director wins were for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan?)!
2.
George Clooney for The Ides of March
The movie trailer screams "OSCAR!" and since George Clooney was already nominated in the Best Director category for Good Night and Good Luck (another movie around politics), I can see another nod for him for his directing work. Directing such a shinning cast must be easy in the way that you can't be concerned about the cast's lack of talent (because the cast composed by names like Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman or Paul Giamatti or Marisa Tomei is talented for sure!), but even good actors need a good director in order to shine. Plus, The Ides of March is a thriller, a political thriller, actually, which is a genre that seems to benefit directors in the Best Director Oscar race (other directors like Ron Howard's case for Frost/Nixon, for example) and since George Clooney is an AMPAS darling and a loved celebrity, I can see the Oscar voter's including him in their lists! He's very popular and most cinema folks and audiences will be happy with his nomination. It's all about Clooney and it seems that 2011 will be named the "Clooney Year" in the cinema history, not only due to The Ides of March (in which he also works as screenwriter and supporting actor) but also due to his role in the promising Alexander Payne's The Descendants...
3.
David Cronenberg for A Dangerous Method
One of the most successful directors alive with a great body of work and a respectful status in the cinema industry, David Cronenberg was never nominated for an Academy Award. He was the man behind the camera that brought movies like The Dead Zone (1983), The Fly (1986), A History of Violence (2005) or Eastern Promises (2007) and now, this year, he's the director of one of the biggest Best Picture Oscar contender: A Dangerous Method, the adaptation of the play The Talking Cure. Fortunately for Cronenberg, people are realizing how overdue he seems to be for an Oscar nomination and once this year's project is getting a lot of buzz, foruns folks are predicting a Best Diretor nomination for him, and, in my opinion, it's seems a fairy and likely thing to happen. His last projects were very good, but they were snubed by the AMPAS in the biggest categories (Best Picture or Best Director), so A Dangerous Method is emerging as a great excuse to apologize the Academy's lack of love from Cronenberg, but the question is: will the AMPAS keep not wanting to recognize his work? We can call him one of the Academy's stepsons, for sure, but even stepsons are loved sometimes...
4.
David Fincher for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
I've no doubts about Fincher's directing talent and since he lost the Oscar of Best Director for Tom Hooper (the guy who directed The King's Speech), I can see the AMPAS nominating him this year again as a way to apologize him for his ugly "not winning" for his amazing work in The Social Network. While there are a lot of concerns about the Hollywood adaptation of the Swedish books when the Swedish movies were released in USA last year and were both critical and commercial successes, I think that these movies lacked something - they lacked some mysterious/darker style. Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo should follow the same tone that was shown in Se7en and it should become a commercial hit, at least, fruit of all the promotional materials that have been released in the last days, the mediatic attentions around the cast for the character of Lisbeth Salander, Trent Reznor's score and, of course, David Fincher and Daniel Craig's names. The movie trailer gives us the promise of a very stylish movie, something that looked great to me, to be completely honest, and I believe that Fincher will bring to the audiences a better adaptation of the first installement of the Millenium Trilogy, comparing to the Swedish movie. In fact, if Fincher gets rave reviews for his directing work and if the movie gets raves too, he will get an instant Best Director nod, because the commercial success of the movie is almost assured at the moment!
5.
Stephen Daldry for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Daldry directed few movies (only three so far!), but he got a Best Director Academy Award nomination for each one of them, which makes him a strong contender in this category for his forth movie - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, an adaptation of the novel of the same name. After his post-holocaust drama The Reader, Daldry goes back to a more Billy Elliot kind of movie and ELIC (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) is already getting a lot of Best Picture Oscar buzz mostly based on the involved names in the project, which always benefits its director. Both The Hours (2002) and The Reader (2008) were nominated in the Best Picture field and both gave an Academy Award of Best Actress to its leading ladies (Kidman for The Hours, Winslet for The Reader), which also shows how the AMPAS seems to love the way he directs! But aren't the three previous nominations enough for Daldry for now? I mean, the AMPAS already showed its love for Daldry and his work and once there are a lot of big names in the Best Director Oscar race this year who didn't receive Academy's recognition a long time ago, maybe most Oscar voters won't put Daldry's name in their nominees list, but there's always the most likely chance until now: the AMPAS simply loves him and directing an "Oscary" picture like ELIC is just another excuse to show all the passion!
UNDER SERIOUS CONSIDERATION:
6.
Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life
One of the most shy directors I've ever known, with almost no public appearances, including a terrible miss in this year's edition of Cannes Film Festival, but the fact is that The Tree of Life is one of the best movies of the year and one of the best ones in the last years in the Art House genre, mostly due to Malick's vision. He was already nominated for the Oscar of Best Director for The Thin Red Line, a war movie, but will Malick get a nod for directing such a philosophical and subjective movie like The Tree of Life? Well, Malick is one director who releases a movie once in a while, turning each one into a cinematic event. Plus, he has a loyal fanatic fanbase and The Tree of Life will be the favorite movie of the most intellectual folks, so I think Malick has good chances in getting a Best Director nod, but it may not happen as well, specially if Terrence Malick won't appear in some awards shows during the awards season (it may be a bit strange for Oscar voters to vote in a man they never saw in the last year)...
7.
Woody Allen for Midnight In Paris
It's all about selling his comeback to his classical style... Woody Allen's last Best Director Academy Award nomination was in 1995 for Bullets Over Broadway and since then he got some nominations in the Best Original Screenplay category, but nothing else. Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona were the best Allen's shots in having a comeback to Oscar glory in the last decade, but they failed in the Best Picture and Best Director categories. This year, Midnight In Paris seems a serious contender in the Best Picture category and in the Best Director one (these two related categories) and it benefits from the new Best Picture Oscar nomination rules, but once it's almost guaranteed that Midnight In Paris won't be the winner of the top category, Woody Allen may not be nominated: the directors of the most likely movies to a Best Picture win are in advantage due to their movies' status. But we can't forget how Allen is loved in Hollywood in the way that he represents the old filmmaking style, he's the director who "created" the concept of romantic-comedy and he's a living legend, a big figure in the cinema history, so I can see the AMPAS nominating one of the living legends of today's cinema industry. I know an Oscar nomination isn't that important for Woody, but his fans appreciate seeing their favorite director recognized for sure for one of the his most charming and fresh movies in a while!
8.
Clint Eastwood for J. Edgar
His last Best Director nomination was for his work in Letters From Iwo Jima, but since then, Eastwood didn't get an Oscar nomination in spite of his work in movies like Gran Torino, Changeling or Invictus. This year, Eastwood brings a biopic around J. Edgar Hoover, a movie genre that usually gives Oscar nominations to the directors (Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind, Martin Scorcese for The Aviator or Gus Van Sant for Milk, for example). While Hereafter wasn't well-received at all, there are a lot of hopes circling J. Edgar and the movie's Best Picture Oscar buzz is huge in the Oscar predicting foruns, but, in my opinion, since the Academy's rules changed in the Best Picture nomination process, I don't see J. Edgar being the number one choice of a LOT of Oscar voters in the way that biopics are, sometimes, a bit boring and there are a lot of more mainstream and audience-friendly movies competing in this year's Oscar race, but the fact is that the AMPAS usually loves Clint Eastwood raved movies. So, if J. Edgar gets raves and has a great awards season, it will be easy to Eastwood to compete against the other Best Directors contenders, but since Best Picture and Best Director categories are like husband and wife most times, he needs a Best Picture nod for his movie in order to have a Best Director seat (almost) saved for him!
9.
Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Sometimes the AMPAS doesn't recognize a movie by nominating it in the Best Picture category, specially when it is a foreign picture, but recognizing its director's work isn't a rare thing at all (Pedro Almodôvar for Talk To Her or Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for example), so Michael Hazanavicius may have good chances for The Artist... but Almodovar and Schnabel were nominated in the time the Best Picture nominees list was composed by only 5 movies... Agnieska Holland for In Darkness is also a likely contender for the "Best Foreign Director" possible spot, but while there's no USA reviews yet, and once The Artist was a Cannes Film Festival hit, Hazanavicius is a serious contender for the Best Director field. Directing a silent movie like The Artist doesn't seem an easy thing at all, but it seems that he was successful doing his job and the truth is there is some Best Picture buzz around The Artist or around Jean DuJardin, who portrays the lead character in it. While he's not the most likely contender for a spot in the 5 AMPAS chosen directors, I can see things changing for him in the awards season. The Artist may not be sent movie from France to compete in the Best Foreign Film category, since it is getting enough traction alone, the Best Foreign Picture submission usually brings bad luck to a movie in the Best Picture category and since Le Havre is also a likely candidate. Even if The Artist isn't nominated in the Best Picture category, I can see Hazanavicius nominated in the Best Director one.
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