For our fourteenth Rundown article, we give you the penultimate category at the Oscars. After the jump, you’ll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Director as well as general commentary about the race. Tomorrow, we’ll cover awards most important to your aural experience.

Best Director

Winner Predictions

• Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris
• Michael Haznavicius – The Arist (O) (O) (O)
• Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life
• Alexander Payne – The Descendants
• Martin Scorsese – Hugo

Runner-Up Predictions

• Martin Scorsese – Hugo (R) (R) (R)

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Wesley Lovell: After his DGA win, there’s little chance that Michel Hazanavicius won’t win the Oscar. His film is going to win Best Picture and any other result would be an absolute surprise. Yet, there are still rumblings that Martin Scorsese could win his second Oscar. If it took them more than two decades to give him one, I don’t think they’ll be in a hurry for a second.

Peter J. Patrick: The DGA winner is always the favorite and this year doesn’t seem to be one of the exceptions. Hazanavicious will win unless there is a completely unforeseen upset in which case Martin Scorsese could take home his second Best Director statuette.

Tripp Burton: This category is filled with three legendary filmmakers (Allen, Scorsese, Malick) and one of the most praised American filmmakers of the decade (Payne), and yet a little-known French director is the front-runner this year for a black-and-white, French-funded silent comedy. The Artist is the film to beat this year, and with a DGA win, Hazanavicious is the man to beat in this category. If anyone can unseat him, it is probably Scorsese for his love letter to silent cinema, but voters will go with the real silent film instead.

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