January 15, 2016    The Revenant landed a leading 12 nominations for the 88th annual Academy Awards. The strong showing for The Revenant sets director Alejandro Inarritu for a possible back-to-back win following his sweep for best picture, director and screenplay for Birdman last year. George Miller’s post-apocalyptic sequel Mad Max: Fury Road followed with 10 nominations, including best picture and best director for Miller. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic The Martian landed 7 nominations, including best picture and best actor for Matt Damon, but, surprisingly, no best director nod for Scott. Eight films were nominated for best picture. The other five were: Tom McCarthy’s investigative journalistic procedural Spotlight, Steven Spielberg’s Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies, Adam McKay’s Michael Lewis adaptation The Big Short, the mother-son captive drama Room and the ‘50s Irish immigrant tale Brooklyn.....MJZ and Biscuit Filmworks each had two directors scoring nominations for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials for 2015. MJZ’s Juan Cabral and Tom Kuntz are up for the honor as are Biscuit’s Andreas Nilsson and Steve Rogers. Rounding out the field is director Miles Jay of SMUGGLER....Diane Jackson has been promoted to chief production officer at DDB Chicago. Jackson will continue to lead the agency’s integrated production department and will still report to John Maxham, chief creative officer of the Chicago office. During Jackson’s first stint at DDB Chicago from 2000 to 2003, she produced notable work for Energizer, McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, JCPenney and Exxon Mobil. Then, for four years, she served as director of integrated production at Energy BBDO in Chicago. In 2007 Jackson returned to DDB as EVP, director of integrated production, where she expanded the agency’s production department across multiple platforms including building content creation capabilities and digital mobile social production expertise..... Director Tomas Mankovsky has signed with international production house Knucklehead for U.S. representation. He was previously handled in the American ad market by Cap Gun Collective and continues to be repped by Blink in the U.K.....

January 14, 2011      The Directors Guild of America has announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2010. They are Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan, David Fincher for The Social Network, Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech, Christopher Nolan for Inception, and David O. Russell for The Fighter.... The DGA has named its nominees for best commercial director of 2010: Frank Budgen of Gorgeous Enterprises, London (who’s handled stateside by Anonymous Content); Craig Gillespie of MJZ; Tim Godsall of Biscuit Filmworks; Tom Kuntz of MJZ; and Stacy Wall of Imperial Woodpecker....Matthew Libatique, ASC (Black Swan), Wally Pfister, ASC (Inception), Danny Cohen, BSC (The King’s Speech), Jeff Cronenweth, ASC (The Social Network), and Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC (True Grit), have been nominated in the feature film category of the 25th annual American Society of  Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Awards....Brian Carmody, managing partner/co-founder of SMUGGLER, has been named the chair of the 2011 AICP Show, The Art & Technique of the American Commercial, which debuts June 8 in New York at The Museum of Modern Art....Crispin Porter+Bogusky’s West Coast office has its first executive creative directors: Tiffany Rolfe and Jason Gaboriau. Rolfe and Gaboriau will serve as co-executive creative directors in Los Angeles where they will lead the Old Navy and Bolthouse Farms’ Baby Carrots accounts as well as a portion of the agency’s Microsoft work.....