Eastwood, Scorsese vie for film director award

Martin Scorsese

The Director's Guild of America (DGA) pitted legendary filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood against each other on today when it unveiled its nominees for best director.

Scorsese was nominated for his epic three-hour biography of billionaire Howard Hughes, Aviator, and Eastwood for his female boxing drama Million Dollar Baby.

Also nominated for the DGA's top directors award was Taylor Hackford for his Ray Charles film biography Ray, and relative newcomers Alexander Payne for the road comedy Sideways and Marc Forster for his Finding Neverland, a romantic film about the creation of Peter Pan.

The winner of the DGA award will be named on January 29.

DGA President Michael Apted said the honour is especially meaningful because it comes from the filmmakers' peers. He called them: "Men and women who know the blood, passion and fear that go into each production."

Winning a DGA award is often an important indicator for the Oscars, the US film industry's top honours given in February by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Fifty of the 56 winners of the DGA award have gone on to win the Oscar for best director. And Oscar has a long history of giving its top award, for best motion picture, to the film made by the person who won best director.

Of the six DGA winners who have missed the Oscar, three have come in the past 10 years, including 2003 when Rob Marshall won the DGA honour for Chicago but lost the best director Oscar to Roman Polanski for The Pianist.

A DGA win would be especially gratifying for Scorsese, the iconic director of films like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. His work Aviator earned him his sixth DGA nomination but he has never won the award or a best director Oscar. In 2003, the DGA gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Eastwood, the veteran actor turned director, has been nominated for the DGA honour three times, and he won it in 1992 for western Unforgiven. That film also earned him an Oscar.

Taylor Hackford has been nominated for the DGA trophy once, for 1982's An Officer and a Gentleman, but he did not win.

The DGA nomination is the first for Payne and Forster.

- REUTERS