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| DIRECTING | Erik Anderson | Bryan Bonafede | Chris Pepper | Evan Kost | James Narvey | Kenneth Polishchuk | Júlia Albuquerque | Monika Nikolić | Richard Anthony | Robert Schirmer | TOTAL POINTS |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Damien Chazelle – La La Land | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 50 |
| 2 | Barry Jenkins – Moonlight | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 40 |
| 3 | Kenneth Lonergan – Manchester by the Sea | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 30 |
| 4 | Denis Villeneuve – Arrival | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 18 |
| 5 | Garth Davis – Lion | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 8 | |||
| 6 | Martin Scorsese – Silence | 4 | 5 | 3 | ||||||||
| 7 | David Mackenzie – Hell or High Water | 5 | 1 | |||||||||
| OTHER CONTENDERS | ||||||||||||
| Mel Gibson – Hacksaw Ridge | ||||||||||||
| Tom Ford – Nocturnal Animals |
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while martin scorsese’s movies are the academy’s favorite, and he’s always been a great contender for this category (which i agree he’ll get nominated again), he has only won it once. i don’t see silence will make him bring home another best director award. jodie foster (money monster) could be a nominee as well (diversity issue, no female director after kathryn bigelow in the nomination, you know feminists movement in hollywood has strong influence lately, and the movie itself got good reviews in cannes, quite satisfying in the box office chart). you forget coen brothers (hail caesar), they are academy’s favorite just like scorsese and allen. i also predict either jeff nichols “loving” or nate parker “birth of a nation” (both are on your list) to be nominated. surprise nominee could be alexander sokurov (francofonia), not only the movie is surprisingly earn a lot bigger than it’s predicted, good reviews by press and festivals, it has unique style and interesting plot -uh,,speaking of best directing- but again, some would say it’s too art house or whatever…
So still nobody predicting a nom for Denzel here? I know Erik mentioned a while back that he was perhaps being overlooked here, and now with all the controversy over Nate Parker, what candidate would more seamlessly replace him than Denzel? It would be an easy uncomplicated move by the academy to avoid controversy from EITHER side of the argument: you don’t nominate someone who was accused of rape, but you still recognize the voice of an african-american director making a movie about black culture in the history of the United States, and not to mention ALSO is the star as well as the director. Depending on how the narratives unfold over the season (and granted that their films are worthy), I think Denzel or Barry Jenkins (perhaps both) are going to get in, especially considering what a banner year it seems that this is going to be for African-American cinema.
It’s going to depend on how Fences is received overall. Clearly it’s in for Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay but it could fall short elsewhere. Washington’s previous directing efforts don’t give us much to work on in that they’re a bit ordinary. Many films are acting powerhouses that don’t grab the top two (like Doubt, for example). In terms of who benefits from Parker’s possible demise here is, as you mention, Barry Jenkins. Moonlight looks like it’s going to be A24’s main push and it could play like Room did last year with that nice surprise Best Director nom.
Ava DuVernay for documentary))))))))