It’ll take a smarter person in a better pay grade than mine to figure out whether studios releasing Unrated DVDs is really against the Director’s Guild rules, but it seems natural to assume Hangover director Todd Phillips might have a case. After all, the studio is often going in after the fact, without director input, and changing the movie while keeping the director’s name wholesale on it. In a recent SXSW panel, Phillips had this to say, “Warner Bros., they’ll make your movie; your movie does well, and they want to create an unrated version, which is entirely against DGA rules because it’s not your cut. And they can’t call it the ‘Director’s Cut’ — they’ll call it ‘Unrated’ or some ridiculous term. Really all it is, is about seven minutes of footage that you cut out of the movie for a reason.” People with law degrees will most likely hash that out, but you don’t have to pass the bar to know that Unrated releases are insulting and ghoulish toward fans. The added scenes are never all that shocking, they usually make the movie drag, and there’s no real attempt to cover up the fact that it’s a craven marketing tool to make more money on a movie the studio already made people like. So hopefully there will be some sort of consequence here through the DGA. Studios might have to stop adding a scene of people eating cereal that the MPAA hasn’t seen, and selling it like it’s [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

This year, someone who has never won a DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement will win a DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. The filed includes three first-time nominees – Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan; Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech; and David O. Russell for The Fighter – as well as two returning nominees – David Fincher for The Social Network (who was previously nominated for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and who has won several commercial directing awards from the DGA) and Christopher Nolan for Inception (who was previously nominated for The Dark Knight and Memento). None of these directors has won the award, which means the Director’s Guild of America’s pattern of celebrating new talent (even talent that’s been around a decade) will continue. In the past 25 years, the DGA has only had 4 repeat winners – Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Oliver Stone. With this list of nominees, it’s guaranteed that yet another new name will join their ranks.

The Directors Guild of America announced the nominees for its 62nd Annual Awards today, honoring outstanding directorial achievement in feature films.

Congratulations are in order for Danny Boyle. Consolation prizes are in order for Ron Howard and David Fincher.

This, added to the SAG win for Best Ensemble, puts No Country on top of the Oscar competition.

The Director’s Guild of America, who’s contract expires this summer, has reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

The DGA has been giving out awards since 1949 and have a great track record for predicting who will win Best Director come Oscar season.