‘Precious’ Director Lee Daniels Gets Historic Nomination
Lee Daniels Becomes First African American DGA Nominee
Each year, the Directors’ Guild of America (DGA) names its nominees for a prestigious award reserved for those directors who have made the largest impact in film.
This year, those nominees are James Cameron (Avatar), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air — only his third film!), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and Lee Daniels for Precious.
While these are all outstanding choices, Mr. Daniels’ nomination is particularly historic: he is the first African American to be nominated for this award by the DGA, edging out Clint Eastwood and many others in a year full of great films.
These nominations give a fairly good indication of Oscar nominees, and it’s likely that this list will comprise the short list in its entirety. The winner of the DGA Award will be revealed on January 30th at the 62nd award gala.
Congratulations to Mr. Daniels for this nomination!
I am thrilled that someone as incredibly talented as Lee Daniels has been nominated for best director. His film Precious is on a par with 20th century movie classics like, for example, Bergman's Autumn Sonata, in my white opinion, which had highest level acting by Liv Ulman being rivaled or even stripped by Mo'nique in Precious. But I just want to ask why the Academy has ignored other great directors, many of them black or female or both? Not a single mention was made by the Academy of Darnell Martin, the half black female director of Cadillac Records. This was a highly underrated film, extremely well put together and with stellar supporting actor roles by Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Eamonn Walker, as Howlin Wolf, and Mos def as Chuck Berry – it won awards and nominations in the black community but the predominantly white Academy completely ignored it. Martin did such an excellent job — it is a crime that she was not even nominated in a recent year in which far most superficial films were done. Academy: please wake up and start paying attention. Drop your bias and look at the merit and talent, no matter where it comes from. You've perhaps started but you have so much further to go–otherwise you are missing out on some of the greatest art of the times.
Also, why was Spike Lee so continually snubbed? OK, so he often has a curt, rude manner but his early films were masterpieces of their day. I'm sure there have been other grouchy directors and filmmakers in Hollywood who nevertheless were recognized.