First up this weekend will be the Directors Guild Awards, on Saturday night, to be held at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Carl Reiner will host the awards for his 16th time. The DGA Winner is usually the best Oscar predictor there has ever been, as their choice and Oscar's Best Director have rarely been different from one another. However, the nominees between both the DGA and the Oscars did not exactly line up here, and the DGA winner may not be the best predictor as it usually is. Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) and Christopher Nolan (Memento) both received DGA nods, but did not get Oscar nominations (instead Robert Altman and David Lynch got those two slots). Should Ron Howard or Peter Jackson win the DGA Award, especially if Howard wins, he stands a good chance of winning the Oscar. But if Moulin Rouge continues to surprise, and Baz wins, all bets are off. The Altman factor is still an interesting one though, and the DGA can't help us there at all.
The other big awards to be presented this weekend are the 8th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. Unlike the DGAs, these will be broadcast on television. The SAG Awards will be presented Sunday night from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, broadcast on TNT. The SAGs will also be an important event to watch from the standpoint of predicting some of these difficult acting categories. Best Actor could very well be decided from who wins the SAG, especially if Denzel Washington wins the SAG. Halle Berry must have the SAG victory to win the Oscar, otherwise, it's pretty much a runaway for Sissy Spacek. The Best Supporting Actor victor may also be the best predictor for the equivalent Oscar victor. The Supporting Actress SAG may not be the best predictor however, since Jennifer Connelly is not in that category, as she's up in the lead actress category.
