Scorsese among nominees for Directors Guild award

LOS ANGELES, Jan 10 (Reuters) ''Little Miss Sunshine,'' an offbeat comedy about an unlikely young beauty queen, emerged as a serious Oscar contender as its first-time filmmakers were nominated for the top award of the Directors Guild of America.

Iconic director Martin Scorsese also clinched his seventh DGA nomination, and perhaps his best shot for the Oscar glory that has long eluded him, for his work on his gritty crime thriller ''The Departed,'' while Bill Condon earned a nod for his lavish musical ''Dreamgirls.'' Rounding out the roster of this year's DGA nominees were British filmmaker Stephen Frears, for his royal family portrait ''The Queen,'' and Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, for his globe-spanning drama ''Babel.'' Noticeably absent from the list were Clint Eastwood, whose Japanese-language World War II drama ''Letters from Iwo Jima'' has been a critical hit, and Paul Greengrass, director of the 9/11 drama ''United 93.'' Scorsese is the only one of this year's DGA nominees to have made the cut before, though Condon earned an Oscar for his 1998 ''Gods and Monsters'' screenplay, and Frears received an Academy Award nomination for directing ''The Grifters'' in 1990.

But the DGA's biggest surprise was its nomination of newcomer directing duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for ''Little Miss Sunshine,'' a whimsical but quirky ensemble comedy once seen as an awards season longshot.

''The fact that it has shown up here, where it was not expected, demonstrates enormous industry support for a film that we must now consider as a best picture contender,'' said awards pundit Tom O'Neil, columnist for the Web site Theenvelope.com.

Dayton and Faris, two music-video auteurs whose first feature film centers on a dysfunctional family rushing across the country in a broken-down Volkswagen van to get their young, plucky daughter to a beauty contest, said they were in a ''state of shock'' over their nomination.

''We always told our cast that 'Little Miss Sunshine' was about not looking at life as a contest, but seeing it more as a dance. So I can say that we are really enjoying this dance,'' Dayton told Reuters.

The winner of the 59th annual DGA Awards, considered a strong bellwether for the Oscars, will be announced on February 3.

BEST DIRECTOR, BEST FILM Thanks largely to overlapping voting membership between the DGA and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the winner of the DGA feature film award has gone on to win the best-director Oscar 52 out of the past 58 years.

And Oscar has a long history of giving its top award, the prize for best picture, to the film made by the winner of the Academy Award for best director.

Moreover, in each of the past four years all the filmmakers nominated for the DGA's feature prize went on to have their work land Oscar nominations for best picture, O'Neil said.

A DGA win would be especially gratifying for Scorsese, the revered director of such films as ''Taxi Driver'' and ''Goodfellas.'' Although he was twice honored for his overall body of work, Scorsese has never won the DGA's prize for a particular film. Nor has he managed to win an Academy Award, despite earning five Oscar nominations as best director.

Eastwood's absence from the PGA pack this year cements Scorsese's status as a favorite to finally triumph, though he faces stiff competition from Condon for ''Dreamgirls,'' a musical loosely based on the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes.

''The one thing that the DGA members love is a big, splashy production, and they appreciate, as directors, all the hard work that goes into a musical,'' O'Neil said.

The Golden Globes, another key precursor to the Oscars, will be presented Jan. 15. The Oscar nominations will be unveiled on January 23, with the Academy Awards presented on February 25.

Reuters AKJ DB1132