BEST DIRECTORUpon viewing the Best Director category it's often important to remember how the nominated directors got here. Some have been building their reputation, image and fanbase over years, some have made a huge impact just on their first couple of movies. Some have a steady output, some take years to film a movie. So let's take a brief recap of the paths out nominees have took that helped them into shaping the movies that got them nominated this year.
Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)The road so far...After making a splash with his debut
Sólo con tu pareja in 1991, Cuarón immediately found himself snatched by Hollywood and ended up doing two English language movies -
A Little Princess and
Great Expectations. Both of those were considered financial disappointments at the time, but
A Little Princess earned itself a cult status.
Cuarón went back to film in his native language, which resulted in
Y Tu Mamá También, both a critical and commercial success and also bringing lots of awards attention. Rather unexpectedly, Cuarón was announced as the director of the
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, third movie in wildly popular franchise about the most famous boy wizard ever. Although the lowest grossing in the franchise, it brought raves to the franchise as well as it completely (re)set the tone and atmosphere of the franchise. His next movie
Children of Men, while a commercial failure, is considered one of the best movies of 2006 and is already a cult classic. Undoubtedly, the skill and craftsmanship he showed in his work so far have been enough for WB to let him make
Gravity. His dream project that was in development for years before and was passed on by other studios. The rocky path the project took paid off immensely. It has become one of the highest grossing movies of 2013. and also brought amazing awards attention on all fields.
Judging by the number of nominations
Gravity has raked up here at WOKJ Cuarón is definitely positioned as one of the front runners here.
Spike Jonze (Her)The road so far...Spike Jonze has debuted his first feature film in 1999. And since then he only made 3 more movies. But one thing you can be sure of is when Spike makes a movie, it's a movie that gets people talking.
If people thought
Being John Malkovich was a weird movie, his follow-up
Adaptation. proved to be even more weird, crazy and head-scratching. Both of those earned raves from botch critics and audience and resulted in lots of nominations and wins. His third feature
Where the Wild Things Are didn't get as much love, but it became his most successful movie yet.
Her is a return to top form - both in weirdness and love from critics and audience. The charm of the movie was enough to bring attention to Scarlett Johansson's voice performance, which got her lots of nominations as well as couple of wins - which is completely atypical for a voice performance since those get awards attention, well, never.
And it seems like WOKJ also didn't end up immune to
Her. 9 nominations shows there's lots of love for this one on these boards, but was this more of a passion vote than a mainstream support? That could very well be the case since all other nominees are much higher profile, but let's not count out this dark horse yet.
Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)The road so far...Steve McQueen is a rather new player in feature film category.
12 Years a Slave marks only his third full-length movie to date and he's 44 years old! But that doesn't mean he hasn't been working on his movie making skills. Since early 90s he has had a steady output of shorts so it doesn't really surprise his debut
Hunger presented him as a director to watch out for.
Not a lot of directors manage to get by with controversy and raves together, but that's exactly what McQueen did with 2011's
Shame. Also it seemed to confirm that McQueen is not here for commercial success' as he seemed interested in themes that deal with most deepest and darkest human thoughts and feelings.
So it's not surprising his third feature is about one of the darkest chapters in human history - slavery.
12 Years a Slave doesn't take an easy approach and isn't treating anyone apologetically. It calls out and makes its statement loudly and obviously.
12 Years a Slave is one of those obvious front runners in nearly all awards so far this year, and WOKJ isn't any different. Though it's always easiest to make a blindside when things seem the most clear, right? Can 12 Years a Slave lose this one despite seemingly huge support in nearly all major categories?
David O. Russell (American Hustle)The road so far...David O. Russell made his debut in the 90's with two rather midly received comedies -
Spanking the Monkey and
Flirting With Disaster. War drama
Three Kings was his first success- both financially and critically.
His next feature
I (heart) Huckabees brought him back to the comedy genre and also to the same lukewarm receptions of his first two movies.
But 2010's
The Fighter started his roll of movies that audiences adore and critics seem to love even more if that's possible. 2012's
Silver Linings Playbook obviously contained the same magic formula as it brought him another round of audience and critical approval while raking more awards.
With
American Hustle he's going 3/3. But can the magic last for a win at WOKJ? It certainly seems like very likely.
Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street)The road so far...It's safe to say that Martin Scorsese is a veteran among the nominated directors. Since the 60's he has had an amazing and regular output of highly quality movies. While getting recognition with every movie and racking those nominations, the prizes always seemed to eluded him. Especially Oscar. But in 2007
The Departed finally won him one.
The road so far... Part 2His most recent output has varied in genre - he dealt with historical epics (
Gangs of News York,
The Aviator), crime movies (
The Departed), mystery/thriller (
Shutter Island) and a family adventure movie (
Hugo).
The Wolf of Wall Street brings him again to biopic genre but this time in a more comedic way. Also notably in his six last movies he collaborated with the main star of
Wolf, Leonardo DiCaprio, five times. DiCaprio only missed his previous movie
Hugo.
Scorsese is an old directing wolf for sure. But he can still bring enough vigor and fight to the game and he's not the one to be dismissed easily.
