2010 Oscar Best Picture predictions upset by Best Director

In the past, predicting the Best Picture Award winner in the Academy Awards was easy: all one had to do was go with the picture that won the Best Director award for the Directors Guild program held over a month (and about two months in 2010) before the Oscars and this year on Saturday, January 30, 2010.

As the DGA website informs us:

The DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film has traditionally been one of the industry's most accurate barometers for who will win the Best Director Academy Award. Fifty-four out of sixty times since the DGA Award's inception in 1949.

Once the DGA made its call, the Oscar race for both Best Director and Best Picture was generally declared over. But with the 82nd Academy Awards, and the new preference voting system for not a set of five, but of 10 nominees for Best Picture, the DGA's predictive power could take a nose dive. In other words, the relational string of DGA Best Director to Oscar Best Director, to Oscar Best Picture, could end.

Here's the problem: there are 10 nominees but only five nominees for Best Director for the Oscars and the DGA shows no sign of inviting 10 nominees for the Best Director award for their event. So we have 10 "Best Pictures", but five "Best Directors". Wild.

Preference voting upsets the apple cart even more. As I've stated before, a solidly popular second place voting finisher for Best Picture for 2010 could wind up being the winner. Let's say that movie's director wasn't a DGA choice; that blows the significance of the DGA award as a precursor to what will happen on Oscar night.

If America was as tuned in to all of the politics behind the awarding of Oscars, the inclusion of preference voting would guarantee a record ratings night. But while that's not going to happen for that reason (it could if a picture like Star Trek makes the Best Picture nominee list), it's clear to me that the entire objective with these two major changes in how the Best Picture is selected is to remove the easy predictability of who would win and open the door to the chance that a block-buster could get the Best Picture Award.

In 2008 there was a ton of early buzz for summer blockbuster Iron Man as a Best Picture nominee for 2009, but it didn't happen. I can't help but wonder if Iron Man was released a year too soon for under this new system for the 2010 Academy Awards it would have been almost a shoe-in.

Stay tuned.