The Director’s Guild of America announced their five nominees for director of the year today.  The DGA is traditionally the last of the precursors to make their opinion known before the actual Oscar nominations are announced.

Traditionally, it seems that four of the DGA nominees are honored with an Oscar nomination while one is usually snubbed.  For instance, last year, all of the self-proclaimed “experts” were all excited when David Fincher was nominated for his shot-for-shot remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but then had their little hearts broken when the Academy declined to nominate either Fincher or his remake.

Who, if anyone, will be snubbed this year?  I’m not even going to venture a guess because, honestly, this year has the potential to be one of the more unpredictable Oscar years.  (Of course, I say that every year and every year, I’m disappointed by how predictable everything eventually turns out to be.)

For now, here are the five directors nominated by the DGA:

Ben Affleck for Argo

Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty

Tom Hooper for Les Miserables

Ang Lee for Life of Pi

Steven Spielberg for Lincoln

Unlike some people, I’m not surprised to see that Quentin Tarantino was snubbed.  Django Unchained might be a difficult sell to the Academy, especially considering that gun control is currently Hollywood’s favorite political cause.  I’m a bit more shocked to see that David O. Russell’s work on Silver Linings Playbook was not nominated.

The Oscar nominations will be announced on Thursday morning.