Oscar can be counted on for certain trends.

An affinity to docs that aren’t commercially successful.
Honouring an actor for a lesser role to make up for a great role they overlooked.
Period films usually take awards for costume and art direction.

Oh, and the film that wins Best Picture almost always goes hand in hand with the award for Best Director.

But every once in a while, things take a turn and there’s a split…which is what I believe we’re headed towards this year. I’ll get into the Best Picture side of the split tomorrow, but today take a look after the jump where I get into the nitty-gritty of this year’s award for Best Director.

Right off the opening tip, David O. Russell is done. He does deserve a lot of credit for coming into THE FIGHTER as a hired gun and working a bit of alchemy to elevate it above its pedestrian trappings…but that’s all the credit he’ll be getting this year. This nomination should do a lot for a guy who was quickly getting a reputation in Hollywood of being wickedly difficult to work with. Maybe this will help him get his stalled auteur project (nailed) out of hock.

Any other year, I’d wager that The Coen Brothers could play spoiler, especially after tapping into the audience at large in a way they haven’t done in a long time. But as anxious as Oscar is to award visionary directors, it actually takes a lot of doing to turn the trick twice. That’s not to say that they won’t nab another directing award eventually, but this won’t be the year.

If there’s a spoiler in the bunch, I believe it could be Darren Aronofsky. Should the two front runners in the category split the voting body, the support for BLACK SWAN could translate into an unexpected victory. Odd things have happened in the category before…think Polanski in 2002, or Soderbergh just two years before that. At the very least, the nomination affirms this vanguard director’s place in Hollywood’s elite and promises more support for his vision going forward.

Tom Hooper has to be the favorite at this point thanks to his DGA win and the wicked amount of support for THE KING’S SPEECH. (I wonder how many times I’ve typed the words “support for KING’S SPEECH” this week?) To be crystal clear, in the last 25 years the DGA Award winner has gone on to take the Oscar all but four times. If there’s a statistical knock against Hooper, it’s that he’s a relative newcomer. KING’S SPEECH is only his third feature, and historically this tends to be a category that likes to reward a filmmaker for a body of work…or entire legacy if your name is Martin Scorsese.

The subtlety of Hooper’s directing, combined with his new arrival on the scene could pave the way for a split. Whether or not Oscar “gets” THE SOCIAL NETWORK, it seems as though everybody is impressed by David Fincher’s vision for the story. Like Aaron Sorkin’s contribution to the film, Fincher’s direction undeniably elevates the film to being so much more than “The Facebook Movie”. The project seems to bring together all of the very best tricks Fincher has learned over his career, and patched them together in an unforgettable way. What it adds up to might be just enough to give Fincher the award in what would be a minor upset. Hooper might already have a DGA Award in hand, but now the voting will be up to more than just directors…and you gotta believe that there are quite a few of the younger Academy members wanting to give “The Director of SE7EN” the gold.

Ryan’s Pick… Fincher makes for a minor upset.

Whaddaya think folks? Leave comments with your own thoughts on possibilities and predictions of the Best Director race.