Despite a slew of rave reviews from various critics, Ethan and Joel Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis” was overlooked by the Director’s Guild of America as the nominees for the 2014 DGA Award for feature film direction were announced Tuesday.
This snub followed similar ones by both the Producers Guild and Writers Guild voters.
The filmmakers who DID make the DGA list included no real surprises. Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity”), Paul Greengrass (“Captain Phillips”), Steve McQueen (“12 Years A Slave”), David O. Russell (“American Hustle”) and Martin Scorsese (“The Wolf of Wall Street”).
It was the first DGA nomination for Cuaron, Greengrass and McQueen, but the 11th nod for Scorsese, who won the award in 2006 for “The Departed.” (Scorsese also won in the dramatic television category in 2010 for “Boardwalk Empire.”)
Very often, the winner of the DGA honor is a good omen for the Academy Awards — with those filmmakers frequently going on to take hone the best director Oscar. A very recent exception to that rule was Ben Affleck who won the DGA last year, but was not even nominated for “Argo.”
Of course, he still ended up winning Oscar gold — as a producer of “Argo,” which won best picture.
