It is nearly impossible to pick how a certain person or film will fair at the Oscars. Many believed last year that Mickey Rourke was a lock for Best Actor. Whoops - it went to Sean Penn. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button picks up 13 nominations, but fails to win in any major category. Be it the fickleness of voters, films peaking too soon or any of the million reasons that an upset is declared, the event is kind of a crap-shoot in many ways. With that said, the Directors Guild of America have named their five nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, which they claim is "one of the industry's most accurate barometers for who will win the Best Director Academy Award," with only six directors in the history of the award not going on to win the top prize. This may be something to pay attention to,

Issued in a press release on their official website at 1:00, the DGA has announced that Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), James Cameron (Avatar), Lee Daniels (Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air), and Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) are the candidates in line for the award, which will be presented on January 30th.

Not exactly a shocking development. Those who have looked at our site's Oscar Eye segments would notice that there isn't a single name within the nominees that doesn't appear in our "Mortal Lock" or "Likely Contender" categories (three appearing in the former). If the list does suggest anything, though, it would probably be that Rob Marshall and Nine will find itself DOA come February 2nd and that things don't look too promising for Clint Eastwood, which would make two years in a row that his film was passed over. Moral of the story? This award doesn't matter until we see who they give it to.