If you were an Academy member, for whom would you vote?
It may sound snooty, but I may abstain in that category because I think they missed some of the best directors of the year…and I’m not even talking about Ben Affleck.
I can’t rattle it all off now, but I think I would have nominated:
Zemeckis for Flight
Hooper for Les Miserables
Ritchie for Sherlock Holmes 2(yes, I’m serious)
Tarantino for Django Unchained
and at least 3 others before any of those. My vote would have been for Hooper, most likely.
I think Spielberg will win.
I really can’t agree with any of those (particularly Hooper, who I thought did a horrible job)–this is one of the year’s that the “snubs” weren’t as good as who made the final cut (IMHO). If there’s anyone that’s conspicuously missing for me, it’s either of the Andersons (Wes or Paul Thomas). But still, this is the best lineup in quite a while.
Would you have nominated the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer for Cloud Atlas? They might have been my fifth pick.
Or possibly even Richard Linklater for Bernie(which mainly was released in 2012, but may have been a 2011 movie).
I have to agree that Hooper’s work on Les Miserables was, I thought, terrible. I am relieved he didn’t get a nomination - I mean, the choices of shots he used, all the super closeups, framing Marius and Cosette totally separately during “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables” (oh, look, surprise! Cosette was there all along!) - simply awful.
I hope hope hope to see Zero Dark Thirty in the next week, so I can see if Bigelow got jobbed out of a nomination. I thought The Hurt Locker was awesome, and the awards for it and her well deserved, so I really need to compare. Affleck, of course, absolutely should have been nominated, I think. He did great work on Argo, and as an actor myself, I think directing your own performance adds another level of difficulty. It can be too easy to let your character run roughshod over the film, and I think he did a nice, subtle job fitting his performance into the ensemble.
Anyway, on to the actual nominees … I am not really up to speed on this category, as I have only seen Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook. Both were fantastic, and both Spielberg and Russell certainly earned their nominations. I have to go with Spielberg, narrowly.
I think Spielberg will probably win, but I’ll be crossing my fingers for Lee. If Affleck had been nominated he probably would have gotten my vote - he made an exciting movie even though everyone already knew how it ended. Of course I guess you could say the same for Spielberg :).
Snooty should come with some taste at least. Hooper’s directing was awful.
And no, you can’t be serious with Guy Ritchie.
I enjoyed both films quite a bit, and the former was particularly overlooked by the Academy in some categories (score, makeup, visual effects, editing). But as directorial achievements? There are quite a few that would’ve ranked higher for me personally.
I usually don’t root against people getting nominations, but man, was I thrilled when Tom Hooper was not nominated here. Terrible work.
I vote for Michael Haneke, although I would have voted for Kathryn Bigelow if she’d gotten the nomination. But like MovieMogul, my true preference would have been either of the Andersons.
Affleck would have gotten my vote, but in his absence… nobody stands out.