LOS ANGELES:

Martin Scorsese cemented his status as favourite for the Oscars’ best director award after winning a key award handed out by fellow film-makers. Scorsese received the top prize at the Directors Guild of America awards for The Departed, the bloody crime drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson.

The winner of the guild’s award for oustanding achievement in a feature film has gone on to win the best director on 52 out of 58 occasions, including last year when Taiwan’s Ang Lee scooped both for Brokeback Mountain. Scorsese’s victory leaves him the clear front-runner ahead of the February 25 Academy Awards.

Scorsese has never won an Oscar and until Saturday had never won the directors guild award either, despite being responsible for landmark movies such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Oscars pundits are convinced that after being passed over for an Oscar on each of the five previous occasions he has been nominated, it is finally going to be the veteran film-maker’s year.

Other nominees for the directors guild prize were Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Babel, Bill Condon for Dreamgirls, Stephen Frears for The Queen and co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for Little Miss Sunshine. Inarritu and Frears have both been nominated for Oscars along with Scorsese. The director seen as the biggest threat to Scorsese’s Oscars hopes — Clint Eastwood — was not nominated by the guild. Eastwood remains a dark horse for the Oscars after being nominated by the Academy for Letters from Iwo Jima.