DGA Nominations Match PGA 5 for 5

The Directors Guild of America nominations were just announced, and they are:

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight
Gus Van Sant, Milk

Those are the same exact five films to nab the previously announced Producers Guild nominations. And yet despite the appearance of The Dark Knight on both lists, I'm still not ready to count out Doubt for a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and I'm still not ready to call The Dark Knight a Best Picture lock.

The Picture and Director Oscar nominations rarely match up 5 for 5 (although on the other side of that, they almost never match up less than 4 out of 5). Doubt director John Patrick Shanley has been getting left out (probably because Doubt still feels a little talky and stagy), but that doesn't really say anything to its Best Picture chances.

Last year's field was much larger and there were a few surprises among the DGA nominees, including Sean Penn's inclusion for Into the Wild. Based on that and a surprising showing of SAG nominations (it landed four), a lot of people expected it to take a Picture nomination. But the Academy didn't go for it, nominating the more conventional Oscar movie Atonement in its place.

This year things feel much more set in stone -- it's usually the list you see above for pretty much everything, except with Doubt occasionally taking the place of The Dark Knight.

By the way, let's talk briefly about Best Director, since we should be talking about the DGAs here: I think Danny Boyle is the frontrunner. He's likable, he's had a long and successful career but has never been nominated before, and people love his film. Whoever actually wins the DGA almost always goes on to win the Oscar -- it's only deviated a handful of times -- so we'll see how that goes, but that will be well after Oscar nominatons are announced.

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