Payne: Running Man
And now we turn our gimlet eye to the best director category. Full disclosure: of the top five men in the race, I’ve only seen two of the movies: The Descendants and The Artist. Any women directors in the race? Oopsy!
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Steven Spielberg, War Horse
David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Michael Hazanavicius, The Artist
Stephen Daldry, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Other directorial contenders: Bennett Miller, Moneyball; Clint Eastwood, J. Edgar; Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Tomas Alfredson, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Martin Scorsese, Hugo; Oren Moverman, Rampart; and George Clooney, The Ides of March.
The best shot is probably Phylida Lloyd – The Iron Lady; behold the power of the Weinsteins!!
And you might consider Lynne Ramsay – We Need to Talk About Kevin – a dark horse, but I’m not willing to bet on it this year. I like your 5, but does this mean Dragon Tattoo gets a BP nom? Hard to get Director and not film if more than 5 movies get BP noms, right?