DGA president Michael Apted today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2007. Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will be Blood)…no surprise. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men)… obviously. Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)…congrats! Sean Penn (Into The Wild)…good for him. Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).
No David Fincher/Zodiac love because they didn’t send the DGA members screeners? I feel a combination of pity and contempt for those people who are too lazy to see the films they need to see on their own, and who lack the gumption to stand up and recognize exceptional classic quality when it’s staring them right in the face. This was primarily a quality-based vote, but you and I know it was governed by the usual political, follow-the-tide, don’t-stand-alone Zelig considerations. (Thanks to Cinemascope‘s Yair Raveh for the first nudge.)

A great quote from E.J. Dionne in today’s Washington Post, passed along by Joe Leydon: “[If] Hillary Clinton‘s answers come off as well- intended lectures, Barack Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy‘s. ‘Do you remember,’ Stevenson said, ‘that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, ‘How well he spoke,’ but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, ‘Let us march.” At this hour, Obama is the Democrats’ Demosthenes.”

Last night the BFCA’s VH1/Critics Choice Awards saluted No Country for Old Men as Best Picture, that film’s Joel and Ethan Coen as Best Director, There Will Be Blood‘s Daniel Day-Lewis as Best Actor, and Away From Her‘s Julie Christie as Best Actress.

Other awards: Best Supporting Actor — Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. Best Supporting actress — Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. (The return of the 33 and 1/3 vinyl record that skips says “Amy Ryan, Amy Ryan, Amy Ryan”….a game of follow-the-pack, pure and simple.) Best Ensemble Award: Hairspray. (Really? Given all the great ensmeble casts we saw this year, including the Superbad guys?) Best Writer: Diablo Cody, Juno. Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille.
Best Young Actor: Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, The Kite Runner. (A political attaboy and a we’re-with-you! award because Mahmoodzada and his family were forced to move from Afghanistan due to fears that The Kite Runner might bring reprisals upon them from Taliban sympathizers.) Best Young Actress: Nikki Blonsky, Hairspray. (I saw the moment when the Botero-like Blonsky won — her “oh my god!” screaming was bridge-and-tunnel gauche, and if she doesn’t Jenny Craig herself down to a more reasonable proportion she’ll be shortening her lifespan. She’s a medicine ball. If Mike Huckabee can do it, so can she.)
Best Comedy Movie: Juno. (It may be the best dramedy, but the best flat-out comedy of the year was Superbad. The BFCA voters just want to attach themselves to the Juno train because it’s “well-loved” and, as of last week, starting to make a whole lot of money.) Best Family Film (live action): Enchanted. Best Made-for-TV Movie: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Best Foreign Language Feature: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. (A good film, but 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a masterpiece.)
Best Song: “Falling Slowly”, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, from Once. Best Composer: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood. Best Documentary: Sicko. Joel Siegel Award: Don Cheadle.
Oh, and way to go to the BFCA webmaster who hasn’t updated the site with last night’s winners and hasn’t even added photos. Get around to it eventually. Have lunch first. Don’t sweat it.

L.A. Times guy Rene Lynch is reporting that two significant Golden Globes parties — HBO and Warner Bros./In Style — have pulled the plug, and that the other big parties are expected to “follow suit.” So the whole thing is kaputski. The ’08 Globes will be a press conference, a one-day news cycle and that’s all. Phffft.

Ten months shy of a 40th anniversary. The realism — crashing car metal, wild sideway skids, flying hubcaps — is awesome. The superb hand-held camerawork and knowing it’s absolutely real (as far as that concept goes) is half the fun. That even the high-level fakery that David Fincher used in Zodiac (which you can’t spot) isn’t part of it. Seen it 20 times; ready for another 20.

“The media is either at your feet or at your throat.” — MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan speaking earlier this afternoon during a discussion of the media pile-on that Hillary Clinton is now suffering through. Deservedly, I would add.

A couple of hours ago the Hollywood Foreign Press association officially confirmed that the 1.13 Golden Globes awards ceremony has been scrapped. Instead a news conference will be aired at 6 pm Pacific to announce the winners in 25 film and TV categories, to be covered live by NBC. And as the clock ticks, the town wonders — what will become of the Oscars if a WGA strike settlement doesn’t happen?

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the Rosemary’s Baby speculation in Andrew Morton‘s Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, to wit: that Suri Cruise is actually the daughter of the late L. Ron Hubbard as a result of Katie Holmes having been “impregnated with Hubbard’s frozen sperm.”

This is one of those rumors that sounds so deranged, it’s classic. It’s like something out of a horror film. It made me imagine the Scientology fertilization ceremony in which Holmes receives Hubbard’s seed, the high officials wearing silk robes and chanting like they do in that orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut. This rumor, I feel, is “better” — more vivid, more imaginative — than Richard Gere‘s gerbil, better than the body of Walt Disney being in cryogenic cold storage…it belongs to the ages.
Morton doesn’t claim the story is actually true. He’s said that Scientology insiders are muttering about it, whatever that means. Probably nothing.

Photos from that Ludivine Sagnier French Playboy photo spread are now online. Thanks to both Alfred Ramirez and Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone for passing along the link.

The Reeler‘s Stu van Airsdale had a chat at last night’s New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony with The Lives of Others director Florian Henckle von Donnersmarck about There Will Be Blood.

The German director “was asked if he was a Blood man or No Country man. He said he’d only seen the first few minutes of the Coens’ film with his wife before the graphic violence compelled her to the exits with him in tow. It made him uncomfortable as well; he preferred the more psychological permutations of brutality spaced throughout There Will Be Blood.
“I can’t judge based on five minutes of the movie,” he said, “but I think it’ll be impossible to outdo it in my heart. It’s a film for film history. I’m in the Academy now, so PTA has my vote. Is he here? Paul Thomas Anderson? Have you seen him?”
No, van Airsdale said, but Daniel Day-Lewis would be there eventually. And when the actor did arrive, both to present Javier Bardem‘s supporting actor prize for No Country and collect his own Best Actor award for Blood, von Donnersmarck indeed cornered him while the rest of the room waited for a piece of him.”