1. Alfonso Cuaron - Gravity2. Steve McQueen - 12 Years a Slave3. David O. Russell - American Hustle4. Paul Greengrass - Captain Phillips5. Spike Jonze - Her(Alt: Martin Scorsese- The Wolf of Wall Street) In a lot of ways, this is a more difficult category to predict than Best Picture. For one, there are less possible nominees than Best Picture, as Best Director is firmly affixed at five nominees. Secondly, the Director's branch of the Academy can be extremely independent-minded, as evidenced by their snubs of Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow last year. Finally, the contenders for nomination this year include a list of previous winners and nominees that looks like a list of the best contemporary directors in cinema. Not an easy task to say the least. Even so, there are a few nominations we know that will for sure happen (although I thought that about Kathryn Bigelow last year). Despite having never been nominated before, I think we can safely say that both Alfonso Cuaron and Steve McQueen will lose their Oscar virginity this year. With an incredibly successful run of three films in four years, David O. Russell has reinvented himself as an Oscar heavy weight and one of the most acclaimed American directors in the business. Having received best director nominations for his last two films, and given American Hustle's status in the awards season, I really can't imagine David O. Russell missing out on a nomination, although with the Directors branch, never say never. If we take these three directors as given, this leaves us with two more nominees. The first of these I decided to go with is Paul Greengrass. I experimented in my mind with substituting Greengrass out for a more experienced candidate such as Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, and the Coen Brothers, all of who have more Academy Award nominations than Mr. Greengrass. However, Paul Greengrass has been nominated before by the Academy (for United 93), so there is proof that the Academy appreciates his style, and Captain Philips feels like a film that the Director's branch will feel is relatively fresh, but still absolutely an achievement of directing, so I am throwing my hat in with Mr. Greengrass. Finally, the last spot was extremely difficult to fill. The four possible contenders I considered were the Coen Brothers, Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne, and Martin Scorsese. These are four of the most respected American auteurs around and trying to choose between them is a sadistic task to say the least. It really is a toss up in my mind between these four candidates, but in examining the history of Best Director, the "fifth" nominee so to speak has often been one of singular artistic aesthetic vision. Using this as the parameters, among these four possible nominees, I think it is fairly clear that the candidate that most satisfies this criteria is Spike Jonze, thus Mr. Jonze just squeaks into the last spot.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.