Oscar's best director award

The Oscar nominations for the best director this year at the academy awards have been out for some while now.And this is what I think about the films and their directors and who I think should win ,but not necessarily will win.The players in contention are

"Precious " (Lee Daniels)
"Up in the Air" (Jason Reitman)
"Avatar" (James Cameron)
"The Hurt Locker" (Kathryn Bigelow)
"Inglourious Basterds" (Quentin Tarantino)

Precious that premiered last year at Sundance film festival ,then titled ‘Push’ has always had a buzz around it which also made me see it. The story of a morbidly obese teenager who is raped twice by her mother’s boyfriend. With Oprah Winfrey being one of the high profile executive producers, it has got it fair share of praise and publicity.

The story is grim and the Direction by Lee Daniels good too. But will he have a chance at the Oscars, not much. It’s not that worthy to walk away with the best director award. It will the first entry to be pushed out.

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds is simply brilliant. Tarantino made a film that he loved and he didn’t care as to whether the critics would like it or the audience wouldn’t .He didn’t care if the public was up for it or not .If he likes what he has made, there is a pretty good chance that the viewers will too. To write a screenplay version of World War II and the Nazi’s end, it takes some doing and some directing! I loved every minute, every chapter.

Another filmmaker whose films I appreciate is Jason Reitman, who came out with ‘Up in the air’, also nominated for adapted screenplay .The modern recession tale of the corporate firing executive and frequent flying miles accumulator Ryan Bingham. Reitman always humanizes his characters that are normal and we get at ease with their flaws. Anna Kendrick’s scene with George Clooney just after she is dumped by her boyfriend by SMS was really well acted and directed.

As far as products, I personally would put Inglorious Basterds and Up in the air above The Hurt Locker, because I found their last scenes and dialogue to be wonderful. Brad Pitt’s ‘I think this is my best one yet’ and George Clooney’s ‘ that one light shining brighter than the most would be the taillight of my plane’ respectively were beautiful lines to end their respective films.

Jason Reitman’s best is yet to come and he will not win this year, neither will Tarantino. The fight is really between ex- spouses- Kathryn Bigelow; who has a realistic chance of being the first woman to win the best director award and James Cameron.

The Hurt Locker-Bigelow’s gritty tale about a bomb disposal squad stationed in Baghdad, where every other thing could be an explosive is the critic circle’s darling and this year’s sleeper hit. It just takes out the motive behind the war and focuses on the soldiers and their single mindedness to their purpose. To make a wrong choice is to die. There is no room for gore or bloodshed, just the ordeal in the desert and how they cope and come out of it.

But tell me if Pandora was not something really out of this world? Avatar so easy could have sunk to be one of the massive flops of all time, but it didn’t. Cameron’s half decade long in production epic can’t be ignored by the Academy .I run out of superlatives to describe the detail and amount of thought that went behind the blue skinned 10 foot Na’vis , their world, language. Cameron has created something new, entirely revolutionary and made movie watching a never before spectacle, an experience that will always remain with you. And for that, he ever so truly and richly deserves that golden statuette. You just can’t snub that sort of an achievement in filmmaking.