Names and faces

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director of "The Revenant," addresses reporters backstage after winning the Feature Film Award at the 68th Directors Guild of America Awards at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016 in Los Angeles.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director of "The Revenant," addresses reporters backstage after winning the Feature Film Award at the 68th Directors Guild of America Awards at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016 in Los Angeles.

An unclear cinematic season got a little foggier on Saturday with Alejandro Inarritu’s Directors Guild win for his harrowing frontier epic The Revenant, with only weeks to go before the Academy Awards on Feb. 28. Even the guilds are divided in their top awards. Spotlight, the drama detailing the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into sex abuses in the Catholic Church, won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble, while the financial crisis “dramedy” The Big Short picked up the Producers Guild Award. The DGA win for The Revenant is not insignificant. Inarritu won last year for the showbiz sendup Birdman, which went on to win the best picture and best director Oscar. In fact, only seven times in the history of the DGAs has a director who won the guild’s top award not gone on to win the Academy Award. The Mexican-born Inarritu was teary-eyed as he accepted the Directors Guild prize, which he characterized as “a hug from my peers.” “This hug, this embrace you are giving me today goes to a small country, to a whole Latin American community in this country,” he said. “Your embrace makes me feel proud.” Both Spotlight director Tom McCarthy and The Big Short director Adam McKay were nominated for the DGA prize and will be competing for the best director Oscar, too. Others in competition included George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road and Ridley Scott for The Martian. Scott is the only one of the bunch without a directing Oscar nomination. Jane Lynch hosted the four-hour, untelevised dinner program, where stars such as Lily Tomlin, Bryan Cranston, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Regina King, James Corden, Nate Parker and Kathy Griffin served as presenters.

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PA

A bus explodes on purpose Sunday on London’s Lambeth Bridge during filming for The Foreigner.

A bus has exploded in central London — but this time it’s only for a movie. City officials Sunday reassured the public that the explosion was a movie stunt for The Foreigner starring Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan. The sight of the bus in flames and the twisted wreckage afterward caused consternation on Twitter from London residents who said the public had not been adequately warned about the stunt. Some complained that children had been frightened by the blast. It reminded some of the 2005 attack on London’s transport system that killed 52 civilians. That attack included the explosion of a bus in central London. The Port of London Authority said Lambeth Bridge had been closed to the public before the stunt.

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