LAS VEAGS (KTNV) — More than a dozen Academy Awards are up for grabs.
Six people are nominated for Best Director so who will take it?
This morning Josh Bell tells you who he believes will take the win.
The nominees are Lee Isaac Chung for "Minari," Emerald Fennell for "Promising Young Woman," David Fincher for "Mank," Thomas Vinterberg for "Another Round," and Chloe Zhao for "Nomadland."
Bell's top pick here is also the most likely winner, Chloe Zhao, who's been winning all of the major awards leading up to the Oscars. If she wins, she'd be only the second woman ever to win Best Director, after Kathryn Bigelow for "The Hurt Locker," and the first woman of color. She's a deserving winner for the way she constructs "Nomadland," which combines a narrative featuring actors Frances McDormand and David Strathairn as fictional characters with a documentary-style look at the community of nomadic workers in the American west. Chloe Zhao integrates these non-actors essentially playing themselves along with the movie's recognizable stars, creating an immersive world somewhere between fact and fiction. "Nomadland" is also a visually stunning movie, with gorgeous vistas that frame its small-scale human drama.
It's unlikely that anyone else will win in this category, but we also really liked Lee Isaac Chung's work on "Minari," his chronicle of a Korean immigrant family attempting to start a farm in Arkansas, and Thomas Vinterberg's work on "Another Round," a funny and sad portrait of middle aged men experimenting with perpetual drunkenness. This is Chloe Zhao's year, but they'd be deserving winners as well.
Watch the full report in the player above.
