DGA Preview: Does Gravity Have Weight?

The Directors Guild of America hands out its highest honor tonight and by all accounts this should be Gravity‘s Alfonso Cuarón’s to lose. He’s run away with the lion’s share of critics awards for his work on Gravity and has been the frontrunner for the DGA and the Oscar since the film’s release.

Currently, all Gold Rush Gang members have predicted Cuarón snagging the DGA prize, save one. Cédric Succivalli has 12 Years a Slave‘s Steve McQueen to pick up the prize in what would be a surprise win. Does Cédric know something we don’t? What would it mean for a McQueen win? It would solidify 12YAS as the Best Picture frontrunner, for one. Even a win for Cuarón here doesn’t mean Gravity automatically becomes a lock for Best Picture. For all of its 10 nominations it’s still, for all intents and purposes, a sci-fi film. That’s a hard obstacle to overcome with the academy but if any film can do it, it’s Gravity.

Most people aren’t considering a crazy upset from a non-Oscar-nominated director like Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips) to win this tonight, but what if he does? Ok, never mind, that’s not going to happen.

How about David O. Russell? American Hustle probably isn’t seen as a ‘directors’ film by the DGA the way that Gravity is and Russell’s strength is in his work with actors (as the film’s SAG win proves) so he probably doesn’t stand much of a chance here either. But, were he to win we’d see yet another upset/monkey wrench in what has already been a truly topsy-turvy season. We’d have to look to BAFTA for some answers and that group could go many ways too.

What do you think? Who has the right stuff to win the DGA and put their film out in front? Guess we’ll have to wait and play the yearly nail-biting game Silver Plate or Gold to find out.