2011 Oscar Preview

by Adam Chitwood    Posted:November 26th, 2010

Best Director
Frontrunners:
David Fincher – The Social Network
Danny Boyle – 127 Hours
Likely to be nominated:
Tom Hooper – The King’s Speech
Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan
Christopher Nolan – Inception
Outside contenders:
Joel & Ethan Coen – True Grit
Peter Weir – The Way Back
Lisa Cholodenko – The Kids Are All Right
The Best Director race is understandably similar to the Best Picture race at the moment. Fincher’s work in The Social Network shows masterful restraint, and Boyle managed to make a film which largely takes place in a small rock cavern visually invigorating. With The King’s Speech being a frontrunner for Best Picture, you can expect Hooper to be at the top of the list of the Director race. Of the 82 films that have won Best Picture, 60 of them have also won Best Director, so these two categories are very closely tied together. And with the list of Best Picture nominees expanded to ten, many look to this category to determine the 5 “real” Best Picture nominees. It would be surprising if either Aronofsky or Nolan were overlooked; both of their films are obviously Director-driven, not to mention wholly original. If True Grit lives up to the hype, expect the Coen brothers to be nominated as well. Weir could be the wild-card in this category. He’s been nominated for Best Director four times in his career, and is something of an Academy favorite.  Then again, it’s also conceivable to think that someone like Cholodenko or David O. Russell could pick up the last slot.

http://www.collider.com/2010/11/26/2011-oscar-preview/#more-62096