Photo: Summit Entertainment
Kathryn Bigelow has taken the Directors Guild of America’s DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2009, besting James Cameron (Avatar), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Lee Daniels (Precious) and Jason Reitman (Up In The Air). The award puts Bigelow on the fast track to becoming Oscar’s first female director to take home the Best Director award and also gives The Hurt Locker a leg up in the Best Picture race as the Director and Picture award often match up. Like Oscar, this is the first time a female has taken home the DGA’s top honor.
The DGA is always the first to remind us the DGA Award often lines up with Oscar’s Best Director as only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has the Feature Film winner not gone on to win the corresponding Academy Award.
On the documentary side of things Louie Psihoyos won for the highly acclaimed and presumed Oscar front-runner The Cove.
Bigelow and The Hurt Locker both stand atop my current Oscar predictions as we are now only a couple of days away from the Tuesday morning announcement of the 2010 Oscar nominees. Stay tuned and click here for a look at all of my top-line Oscar predictions.
