'Revenant' director wins top DGA prize
LOS ANGELES — An unclear cinematic season got a little foggier on Saturday with Alejandro Inarritu's Directors Guild win for his harrowing frontier epic “The Revenant.” With only weeks to go before the Academy Awards on Feb. 28, the race is still as wide open as ever.
Even the guilds are divided in their top awards. “Spotlight,” the drama detailing the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into sex abuses in the Catholic Church, won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble, while the financial crisis dramedy “The Big Short” picked up the Producers Guild Award.
The DGA win for “The Revenant” is not insignificant. Inarritu won last year for the show biz sendup “Birdman,” which went on to win the best picture and best director Oscar. In fact, only seven times in the history of the DGAs has a director who won the guild's top award not gone on to win the Academy Award.
The Mexican-born Inarritu was teary-eyed as he accepted the Directors Guild prize, which he characterized as “a hug from my peers.”
Both “Spotlight” director Tom McCarthy and “The Big Short” director Adam McKay were nominated for the DGA prize and will be competing for the best director Oscar too. Others in competition included George Miller for “Mad Max: Fury Road” and Ridley Scott for “The Martian.” Scott is the only one of the bunch without a directing Oscar nomination.
