At Miramax, Harvey Weinstein justifiably gained a reputation as something of an Oscar kingmaker, very effectively earning Academy Awards for often unlikely or unexpected features.  Last year, The Weinstein Company, the professional home of the brothers Weinstein, campaigned well on behlaf of The King's Speech, and it's looking increasingly likely that the distributor can do it again this year with The Artist.  See, French helmer Michel Hazanavicius just won the feature film award at the 2012 Director's Guild of America Awards.

The Directors Guild of America has announced the five nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film at the 64th Annual DGA Awards.  Last week we saw three separate professional organizations formally announcing their awards contenders, with the Art Directors Guild, Producers Guild, and Writers Guild all dropping press releases.  To those folks who assiduously track every blip on the awards season radar, though, the DGA Awards are a bigger deal than any of those.  Why?  Because the winner of this DGA honor has only ever failed to correspond with the Best Director Oscar six times, and the directorial Oscar also tends to go to the Best Picture winner.

Earlier today, we reported that Davis Guggenheim’s excellent documentary, Waiting for “Superman”. was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking by the DGA.

As a filmmaker, Guggenheim has examined the failing of America’s educational system. The idea that so many children are being passed on from grade to grade and not really learning is absolutely heartbreaking. While I won’t delve too deep into the film itself for this particular story, it is very clear that something is terribly wrong within our public school system. This was a subject that needed to be opened up, and this absorbing documentary did just that.