Avatar’s DGA nod sees Oscars race go mainstream

After several years of serious and/or small-budget films triumphing at the Oscars, could 2010 be shaping up to be the year of the mainstream movie? James Cameron's sci-fi blockbuster Avatar, Jason Reitman's comedy Up in the Air, starring George Clooney, and Quentin Tarantino's flashy WWI epic Inglourious Basterds with Brad Pitt have all been nominated for a Directors Guild of America (DGA) award.
 
Voted for by fellow film-makers, the DGA award has proved a reliable pointer for the best director Oscar and, by extension, best film Oscar. Last year's DGA honour went to British film director Danny Boyle whose low-budget crowd-pleaser Slumdog Millionaire subsequently went on to sweep the Oscars, winning eight Academy Awards including best picture and best director. In fact, in 61 years of the DGA, the winner has subsequently taken home the best director Oscar 55 times.
 
A win by James Cameron, for example, would make it highly likely that Avatar - which last Sunday became the fastest film of all time to earn $1 billion at the global box office - takes home the best picture Oscar, thereby ending a dry run for blockbusters at the Academy Awards. It is six years since Peter Jackson's third Lord of the Rings film, The Return of the King, won best film.
 
Recent Oscar winners have been either low-cost outsiders like Slumdog Millionaire or more serious fare such as Martin Scorsese's 2006 film The Departed and the Coen brothers' 2007 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men.
 
Two other directors up for the DGA  are Kathryn Bigelow, for her critically acclaimed Iraq action film The Hurt Locker, and Precious director Lee Daniels, the first African-American director to be nominated.
 
But the names of those missing from the shortlist of DGA contenders may give a better clue as to the way the awards season is shaping up. They include Jane Campion for her John Keats drama Bright Star, Joel and Ethan Coen for their dark Jewish comedy A Serious Man, Peter Jackson for The Lovely Bones, about a murdered teenager, and Lone Scherfig for An Education, a coming-of-age story set in 1960s suburban London.

The scene seems set for a showdown between Hollywood's big guns. ·