The Director's Guild of America have announced the five nominees for their top award, and the surprise this year is as much in who's left out, as who made the list.
The only returning nominee is Martin Scorsese, who's getting his shot at the gong for The Departed. The other four are all newbies: Bill Condon for Dreamgirls, Brit and Empire award winner Stephen Frears for The Queen, husband and wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for Little Miss Sunshine, and the man with James Dyer's favourite name in filmmaking, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Babel.
The real shock though, that there's just not enough love for Clint Eastwood this year, who directed two films favoured for awards – his Iwo Jima parallelaquels Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. This may be a result of that strange, cancelling-each-other-out rule (effectively, you split your own vote, allowing others to get ahead) that sometimes happens in elections.
And, as Variety points out, there's a strange coincidence this year – all five films on the list are also nominated for the Producer's Guild of America. Spooooky.
But it's when you see the rest of the almost-rans that you realise what a strong year it's been: nothing for Paul Greengrass (United 93, the best film of the year, says us), Alfonso Cuaron (Children Of Men) Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), Pedro Almodovar (Volver), Christopher Nolan (The Prestige), Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain), or Larry Charles (the credited director Borat). But then, there were more than 400 films eligible for the list, so someone's got to miss out.
The winner will be announced at a ceremony on February 3rd.
And one for trivia fans: the only Oscar winner among the five nominees is Condon (who picked up a Best Screenwriting statue for Gods And Monsters).