Directors Guild Award: Who will win?

With just days to go before the Oscar nominations, it’s feeling more and more like a battle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker for the two big wins, Best Picture and Best Director. Hurt Locker and its director, Kathryn Bigelow, won both prizes at the Broadcast Film Critics Awards, while James Cameron’s opus fired back with wins at the Golden Globes. But then Locker returned with the Producers Guild prize. This weekend brings the Directors Guild Awards, where Cameron and Bigelow will compete against Up in the Air‘s Jason Reitman, Inglourious Basterds‘ Quentin Tarantino, and Precious‘ Lee Daniels. But clearly this is a two-horse race. Over at Gold Derby, Tom O’Neil has assembled predictions from loads of professional guessers (including myself), and the current tally is 20 for Bigelow vs. 8 for Cameron. I’m on “Team Bigelow,” as Tom puts it, because I feel like the DGA members will go for Bigelow’s feet-on-the-floor vibe over Cameron’s computer-generated achievement. And isn’t it just amazing that they’re (albeit friendly) ex-spouses?

Am I right on predicting Bigelow? Or will it be Cameron this Saturday?

Image credit: Cameron: Mark Fellman; Bigelow: Jonathan Olley