The Directors Guild of America has announced their five nominees, and it's an all-male affair. Anne Thompson notes in her Thompson on Hollywood blog that "If there was any doubt as to which films were the front-runners in the Oscar race, they were quelled by the Directors Guild announcement of their nominees. The DGA tends to match Oscar nominations four for five. A movie almost never wins best picture without a DGA nomination, and the DGA winner has been the Oscar winner all but six times since 1948."
Thompson goes on to say that "The DGA tends to nominate women more often than the Academy director's branch, which is an elite group of about 300 filmmakers, mostly male. The fact that Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) did not score a nom does not bode well for her Oscar chances, although the film is popular, and will likely score wins with the Golden Globes this weekend as a comedy. In the past, nominated women writer-directors such as Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola wound up winning Oscars for writing rather than directing."
Thompson suggests that Winter's Bone's Debra Granik may join Cholodenko as an Oscar-nominated writer rather than director.
You can read Thompson's full blog here.