Movie Nation

If, as they say, “Best directors direct best pictures,” the Oscar field got a LOT simpler/clearer today. No, the DGA nominations don’t correspond exactly with Oscar nods, but the DGA has spoken.

And it’s Affleck and Spielberg, Hooper and Bigelow and Ang Lee — directors of big studio pictures — who nailed down the DGA nominations.

Lee, Spielberg, Hooper and Bigelow all have Oscars to their credit already.

That means that Joe Wright (“Anna Karenina”), Juan Antonio Bayona (“The Impossible”) and a few other worthies outside of the major studios are longer shots at nailing down significant nominations. I had hopes for indie icon Richard Linklater (“Bernie”) had figured Bob Zemeckis (“Flight”) had a shot at Oscar gold. But the Oscar field will probably look a LOT like this.

BEN AFFLECK
Argo
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Mr. Affleck’s Directorial Team:
· Unit Production Manager: Amy Herman
· First Assistant Director: David Webb
· Second Assistant Director: Ian Calip
· Second Second Assistant Directors: Clark Credle, Gavin Kleintop
· First Assistant Director (Turkey Unit): Belkis Turan
This is Mr. Affleck’s first DGA Feature Film Award nomination.

KATHRYN BIGELOW
Zero Dark Thirty
(Columbia Pictures)
Ms. Bigelow’s Directorial Team:
· Unit Production Manager: Colin Wilson
· First Assistant Director: David A. Ticotin
· Second Assistant Directors: Ben Lanning, Sarah Hood
· First Assistant Director (Jordan Unit): Scott Robertson
· Second Assistant Directors (Jordan Unit): Jonas Spaccarotelli, Yanal Kassay
· Second Second Assistant Director (Jordan Unit): Tarek Afifi
· Unit Production Manager (India Unit): Rajeev Mehra
This is Ms. Bigelow’s second DGA Feature Film Award nomination. She won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for The Hurt Locker in 2009.

TOM HOOPER
Les Misérables
(Universal Pictures)
Mr. Hooper’s Directorial Team:
· Unit Production Manager: Patrick Schweitzer
· First Assistant Director: Ben Howarth
· Second Assistant Director: Harriet Worth
· Second Second Assistant Director: Dan Channing Williams
This is Mr. Hooper’s second DGA Feature Film Award nomination. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for The King’s Speech (2010) and was previously nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television/Mini-Series for John Adams in 2008.

ANG LEE
Life of Pi
(Twentieth Century Fox)
Mr. Lee’s Directorial Team:
· Unit Production Manager: Michael J. Malone
· Unit Production Manager (Taiwan): Leo Chen
· First Assistant Directors: William M. Connor, Cliff Lanning
· Second Assistant Directors: Robert Burgess, Ben Lanning
· Unit Production Manager (India Unit): Sanjay Kumar
· First Assistant Director (India Unit): Nitya Mehra
· Second Assistant Director (India Unit): Ananya Rane
· Second Second Assistant Directors (India Unit): Namra Parikh, Freya Parekh
· Second Assistant Directors (Montreal Unit): Derek Wimble, Renato De Cotiis
This is Mr. Lee’s fourth DGA Feature Film Award nomination. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and was nominated for Sense and Sensibility in 1995.

STEVEN SPIELBERG
Lincoln
(DreamWorks Pictures/Twentieth Century Fox)
Mr. Spielberg’s Directorial Team:
· Unit Production Manager: Susan McNamara
· First Assistant Director: Adam Somner
· Second Assistant Director: Ian Stone
· Second Second Assistant Directors: Eric Lasko, Trevor Tavares
This is Mr. Spielberg’s eleventh DGA Feature Film Award nomination. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film three times for Saving Private Ryan (1998), Schindler’s List (1993) and The Color Purple (1985). He was also nominated in this category for Munich (2005), Amistad (1997), Empire of the Sun (1987), E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Jaws (1975). Mr. Spielberg was honored with the DGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.

Cirque du Soleil movies are a lot like ballet films – long on beauty and artistry, short on story.

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The long Woody Allen Euro-sojourn is over. For now.

“Blue Jasmine,” which Sony Classics just grabbed the rights to, is Woody back in New York for the first time since that awful Larry David comedy “(Whatever Works”) he did a few years back.

It’s a New York housewife in existential crisis comedy, and the cast is — “Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Louis C.K.? Dice Clay?

The saga of the “West Memphis Three” reaches a thrilling if somewhat anticlimactic conclusion in “West of Memphis,” a documentary financed by Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson and directed by Amy Berg.

Berg, who directed the damning Catholic priests and child abuse documentary “Deliver Us from Evil,” pulls together a riveting story built on one of the most notorious murder cases of recent history. In 1993, three very young boys were murdered and dumped in a ditch in West Memphis, Arkansas. The West Memphis Three, socially outcast teenagers, were caught, tried and convicted and spent nearly two decades in prison despite rampant evidence of medical examiner incompetence and police and prosecutorial misconduct.

The case was kept alive and in the public eye largely on the strength of a trio of documentaries by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Their “Paradise Lost,” films inspired ongoing media interest in a case that seemed both sensational – allegations of ritual sexual abuse and Satanic/occult murder – and closed thanks to “the finality of judgment.”

One of the teens confessed. Witnesses came forward alleging one of the boys, aptly-named Damien, was into the occult. The state of the bodies seemed so awful that only devil worshippers could be responsible, or so the theory went.

“We’ve got a story that is very, very believable,” one interview subject recalls hearing. “So believable, it’s almost perfect.”

That story, manipulated by the local police and trumpeted by an ambitious prosecutor, is the one lead they pursued. It worked and won convictions.

Berg, working with a private investigator Jackson and longtime companion Fran Walsh hired, interviewing a retired FBI profiler Jackson & Co. put on the payroll, and interviewing the victims’ families (who were, the closing credits tell us, compensated for the interviews), weaves this tortured tale into a compelling narrative that has twists and turns, blind alleys and lots of interviews with Damien Echols in his jail cell.

Jackson appears on camera, talking about the steps they took to immerse themselves in the case.  Musician Eddie Vedder got deeply involved. And Johnny Depp. The “WM3” became a cause celebre among the celebre. And then Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks got sucked into it and played an even bigger part in casting doubt on the guilt of the Three.

It’s a fine summation of this complicated story, one that focuses heavily on Echols and his sweeping declarations about the state of justice in Arkansas and America. Enduring almost 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit entitles him to that. And to the fact that Echols and a woman he met by mail and married while in prison, Lorri Davis, are producers on the film.

But for all the ebb and flow of this saga, the TV news footage and snippets of newspaper stories about the case sampled here, the omission of more than a passing mention of the “Paradise Lost” films robs “West of Memphis” of some of its credibility. If anybody anywhere knows anything about this case, it’s because of those two filmmakers – Berlinger and Sinofsky. They wouldn’t agree to be interviewed here?

Maybe they were concerned that Jackson’s money would allow him and Berg to take credit at the end when they haven’t been there since the beginning.

Which is the worst thing you can say about this otherwise righteous, if somewhat star-struck film. The “Paradise Lost” guys moved the ball down the field, all the way to the end zone. Now, a new owner and his backup quarterback are spiking the ball.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content and some language

Cast: Damien Echols, Lorri Davis, Holly Ballard, Mark Byers, Terry Hobbs, Peter Jackson, Eddie Vedder

Credits: Directed by Amy Berg, written by Amy Berg and Billy McMillin. A Sony Pictures Classics release. Running time: 2:26

The Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, the Goyas, nodded “The Impossible” way 14 times today.

And an actual Spanish language drama from Spain, “Blancanieves,” scored 18.

Not the film selected for their “best foreign language” Oscar contender, but one the judging body deemed the most worthy. It’s a black and white silent retelling of “Snow White,” so this is Spain’s year to get all gushy over a silent film — like “The Artist.”

“Comic Con: Episode IV, a Fan’s Hope” is Morgan “Super Size Me” Spurlock’s affectionate visit to San Diego’s annual super-sized comic book, and sci-fi and fantasy movie, TV and game gathering of the nerd tribes. It’s a gentle, almost nostalgic look at fanboy and fangirldom.

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In the decade-plus since filmmaker James Cameron created Hollywood’s favorite punchline, the world has truly been the man’s oyster. He’s taken cameras underwater to film shipwrecks, and plunged even deeper in his own submersible into Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the deepest part of the biggest ocean.

Just last month, he presented his findings there at the Deep-Sea Biology Symposium in New Zealand, and is slated to do the same at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco in a few days.

He’s announced a Showtime TV series which he’ll produce about global climate change. “The Years of Living Dangerously” will feature famous eco-friendly actors interviewing local people dealing with the consequences of climate change in their part of the world.

“We’ll make it exciting,” added Cameron. “We’ll make it investigative.”

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Sure, it’s Oscar season. But the Oscars are the ghosts of Movies Past – last year’s movies, yesterday’s news.

It’s 2013. What do THIS year’s movies hold in store for us?

We’ve got remakes of “Evil Dead,” “Old Boy” and “Carrie,” reboots of Superman (“Man of Steel”) and Mr. Patriot Games (“Jack Ryan”).

There are, of course, sequels galore, from “Iron Man 3, “Star Trek Into Darkness” and “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” to “Monsters University,” “A Good Day to Die Hard,” “Fast & Furious 6,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” “RED 2,” “300: Rise of an Empire” to “The Best Man 2,” “Thor : The Dark World” and – shudder – “Anchorman: The Legend Continues.”

Will the second “Hunger Games” (“Catching Fire,” Nov. 22) improve on the first one? Will “The Desolation of Smaug” (Dec. 13) be a shorter, quicker “Hobbit” than the first one?

Is “Ender’s Game” (Nov. 1) the next “Hunger Games”?

Does Tom Hanks (“Captain Phillips” the one about the Mersk Alabama hijacking, Oct. 11) still have box office clout? Does “The Hangover” (“Hangover III”) still have legs?

Just from scanning the hundreds of titles slated to head our way this year, it’s obvious that may be more of a guy’s year at the movies than usual – even with a “Hunger Games” sequel. But there are plenty of pictures with intriguing combinations of story, cast, director and place within the zeitgeist to give us hope. Here are ten of them.

“Oz the Great and Powerful” (March 8) is Disney’s prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” how the Midwestern magician landed in Oz and became a wonderful wizard. This could be this year’s “John Carter,” or it could be the film every child is dying to see over spring break.

“The Heat” (April 5) will be the second Melissa McCarthy comedy (after “Identity Thief,” Feb. 8). Is there such a thing as too much Melissa? Sandra Bullock spent WAY too much time after winning her Oscar to get back into the swing of things. A buddy comedy will be her first project in theaters this year, with the sci-fi epic “Gravity” awaiting a release date.

“Pain & Gain” (April 26) pairs up Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson as musclehead ex-cons, a couple of dopes, who stumble into crime. Nobody does buddy pictures like Wahlberg, and the trailers are a hoot.

“Star Trek Into Darkness” (May 17) appears to be a J.J. Abrams re-engineering of the “The Wrath of Khan” and the original “Khan” episode of the first “Star Trek” series. He’s got Benedict Cumberbatch as his villain and a rumor of a “Wrath of Khan” style death of a principal character. Curious to see how he pulls this off, because you know he will.

“Man of Steel” (June 14)  has a star (Henry Cavill) who has had a few shots at box office success, and a director (Zack Snyder of “300” and “Watchmen” and “Sucker Punch”) who could use a hit. So there are doubts. But the first trailer brought “Superman” film and comic book fans to tears. This could be special.

“World War Z” (June 21) promises to be the ultimate zombie picture. With zombies all over TV, and over-exposed by “Warm Bodies” (Feb. 1), this delayed Brad Pitt vehicle has its work cut out for it.

“Pacific Rim” (July 12) looks like “Godzilla” meets “Transformers.” But it’s from fanboy favorite Guillermo del Toro,and is the big budget sci-fi movie he chose to do instead of hanging out with “The Hobbit” for years. So we’ll see.

“White House Down” (June 28) has Channing Tatum as a secret service agent fighting his way through 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. after paramilitary terrorists take over the place, and seize the president.

“Rush” (Sept. 20) is Ron Howard’s film about an epic era in Formula One racing, the Niki Lauda/James Hunt duel on the world’s fastest, most dangerous race tracks.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (Dec. 25) was a famous James Thurber story about a man who lets his imagination run wild, contributing to his arrested development. Men acting like children was unusual in the 1940s. Can Ben Stiller & Co. spin this funny, if dated concept into comic gold?

(A more complete list of titles and dates is here)