Best Picture Oscar race narrowed to three

It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, but the Best Picture race is now down to three finalists -- Avatar, The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air. That became clear today when the Director's Guild of America announced its five nominees for the year -- James Cameron for Avatar, Kathryn Bigelow for Locker and Jason Reitman for Air, along with Lee Daniels for Precious and Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. Expect the latter two to be in competiion for the Best Picture Oscar also, but I don't give either much shot at a victory.

If I were a betting man (and I've been known to be) I would put my money on Ms. Bigelow to win both the DGA's honor and the Director Oscar. However, I wouldn't be at all suprised to see one of the other two win the Best Picture Oscar. A split like that is rare, although certainly not unheard of. In fact it has occured three times this decade: In 2006 when Crash won the picture Oscar and Ang Lee won the directing trophy for Brokeback Mountain; in 2003 when Chicago won best picture and that noted film fugitive Roman Polanski won the directing Oscar for The Pianist; and in 2001 when Gladiator took the main prize but the directing Oscar when to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic.