Best Director

The Academy has the following to choose from for Best Director.

Best Director Nominees
Amour--Michael Haneke
Beasts of the Southern Wild--Behn Zeitlin
Life of Pi--Ang Li
Lincoln--Steven Spielberg
Silver Linings Playbook--David O. Russell

And the Oscar will go to:

I believe the Academy will choose Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.  This is his 9th nomination in this category and the last time he won was in 1999 for Saving Private Ryan. The sweep of this movie and the way the story is told is worth the Oscar.  I don't know that he had much to do with the creative process that made Daniel Day-Lewis Lincoln, but I would think wrangling everyone else around that had to be a job and a half. I have not seen Life of Pi, but I know that Ang Li is a favorite as well and the imagery even in the previews makes this a tight race, I think. I loved Silver Linings Playbook, but I feel like there were too many continuity errors for it to win best directing, he's supposed to have the all the movie in mind. I saw Beasts of the Southern Wild, it is an interesting concept, but I would be surprised if it won. I have not seen Amour.

My choices for best directing would be.

Dream Nominees:
Tom Hooper--Les Miserables, he made brilliant choices all around. I am sad to see he wasn't picked for real.
Ben Affleck--Argo. Ok, so I haven't seen Argo, but he won every other award, and I've loved Gone, Baby Gone.
Joss Whedon--The Avengers.  The post-credits scene is worth an Oscar by itself.
Asger Leth--Man on a Ledge. He made Sam Worthington seem like a real actor.
Robert Zemekis--Flight. His choices in story telling and analogy are outstanding.

And if I could nominate someone for worst directing it would be Gary Ross for the Hunger Games. That movie could have been so much better if I hadn't needed to keep my head cocked to one side or the other half the time.

And my winner is:

Joss Whedon for the Avengers. Yes, I love Joss Whedon. I am a closet (not any longer) Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel fan. I love Firefly. If you haven't seen Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, you are missing a cult classic. (Thank you Leighton!) The man wrote the screenplay for the original Toy Story for goodness sake! And I can't tell you how excited I am that he has done a version of my favorite Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing. No one else could have wrangled all these superheroes and not turn it into a 100% cheesefest. The movie was what movies are supposed to be FUN! That's all comes from the vision, straight from the director. Thank you Joss!