The Oscar odds are with the Coen brothers.
Joel and Ethan Coen claimed the Directors Guild of America's feature prize Saturday for No Country for Old Men, assigning them and their thriller to the front-runner's seat at the Kodak Theater.
As Academy Award buffs can and will tell you, since the DGA handed out its first awards in 1949, only six DGA winners have failed go on to capture the Best Director Oscar. And as the same buffs can attest, with the Best Director Oscar usually goes the Best Picture Oscar.
The DGA win is the first for the Coens, who have collaborated on a slew of genre-bending movies since 1984's Blood Simple. Joel Coen previously was nominated for a DGA for 1996's Fargo, the chipper wood-chipper dramedy that earned the siblings a screenplay Oscar and Frances McDormand, Joel Coen's wife, a Best Actress trophy.
The Coens are up for four Oscars next month: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and, don't let the "Roderick Jaynes" nom de plume fool you, Best Editing.
In scoring the DGA, the Coens defeated three of their Oscar rivals: Michael Clayton's Tony Gilroy, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Julian Schnabel and, There Will Be Blood's Paul Thomas Anderson. They also downed Into the Wild's Sean Penn, who isn't in the Academy Awards field, and Juno's Jason Reitman, who is.
The nonwinners should take heart: Twice this decade, the DGA's pick hasn't become the Academy's pick. And three times, the Best Picture and Best Director prizes have been split among two movies.
Chicago's Rob Marshall was the last DGA winner to lose on Oscar night; Crash (Best Picture) and Brokeback Mountain (Best Director) were the last movies to go halvsies.
The 60th annual DGA Awards—a dinner, not a TV show, so thusly insulated from this season's strike drama—boasted name presenters, including Oscar nominees Daniel Day-Lewis, Ellen Page and Marion Cotillard.
AMC's Mad Men and ABC's Pushing Daisies were honored for TV Drama and Comedy Series Directing, respectively. HBO's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee won the miniseries/TV movie category, while CBS' The Amazing Race added to its Emmy haul with a DGA for reality series direction.