We've reached the final piece of the pre-Oscars puzzle that someone who enjoys unusually boring puzzles is assembling, now that the Directors Guild has followed the Screen Actors, Writers, and Producers Guilds in arranging increasingly familiar shapes into a picture of the year in movies. That's truer than ever with the DGA, which extended its first-ever nod to Ben Affleck but also recognized four previous winners in Kathryn Bigelow, Tom Hooper, Ang Lee, and Steven Spielberg—Spielberg's 11th career nomination something of a comeback from last year, when War Horse failed to impress despite its prestigious amount of war and horses. ("Next time add presidents," the DGA's apology note probably read.) This year the surprising sort-of-snubs went to David O. Russell, who's been recognized nearly everywhere else, and any of the choose-your-own dark horse favorites like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Wes Anderson. If you want to nominate any of those people, you'll have to form your own guild.
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