RRR misses the Directors’ Guild Of America nomination, all eyes on Naatu Naatu now

A bit of a setback for SS Rajamouli and RRR in his arduous and expensive journey towards the Oscar. The Directors’ Guild Of America (DGA) has not nominated Rajamouli in its shortlist of Best Directors.
The names on the DGA’s list are Todd Field (Tar), Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun Maverick), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Martin McDonagh (The Banshees Of Inisherin) and Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans).
This more or less ends all speculation on whether RRR will get an Oscar nomination, as the DGA is seen as a reliable precursor to the Oscars.
All eyes are now on MM Keeravani and his song Naatu Naatu to bring home the Oscar. In an exclusive interview, Keeramani told this writer he is confident his song will win the Oscar.
Naatu Naatu too is not MM Keeravani’s best, but it is his biggest chartbuster. And now after the Golden Globe, more fans of Keeravani will suddenly crawl out of the woodwork. Hopefully they will go back in time to listen to Keeravani at his best in Annamayya (1997), Allari Priyudu (1993), Subha Sankalpam (1995) and Magadheera (2009) all in Telugu.
And to know the summits that Keeravani is capable of scaling, the songs and music in Amol Palekar’s Paheli in Hindi is a sufficient pointer.
For too long now, Hindi/North Indian listeners have been led to believe that Ilayaraja and AR Rahman are the ultimate composers from the South. This is not only a falsification of facts but also dangerously subversive. It’s like being led to believe that only Naushad and RD Burman did any worthy compositional work in Hindi cinema.