Will ‘Gravity’ and ’12 Years a Slave’ split the top Oscar prizes like they did at the Golden Globes?

There’s just no logic to Hollywood awards season, especially when you're talking about the Golden Globes.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that if you are chosen as the Best Director in a given year that your film would also be a shoo-in for Best Picture as well. However, as last night’s Golden Globes demonstrated, that's not always the case.

Alfonso Cuarón took home the Best Director award for "Gravity," while Steve McQueen's “12 Years a Slave” - favoured in both categories - won the Best Motion Picture – Drama trophy.

It’s very rare for the Best Director and Best Picture Globe categories to not align, but it does happen from time to time. In 2011, Martin Scorsese won the Golden Globe for Best Director (“Hugo”) and Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” earned the Best Picture nod, and in 2007 Joe Wright upset a stacked field of filmmakers by winning Best Director for “Atonement,” while Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” - a film not even nominated for Best Director - scored the coveted Best Picture prize.

Given the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s (HFPA) penchant for curveballs in top tier categories (see above), the Golden Globes aren’t really a great bellwether for the Best Picture and Best Director prizes at the Oscars. David Fincher and “The Social Network” took home both prizes at the Globes a few years ago, and neither were recognized by the Academy Awards a few months later. Those looking for Oscar indicators from last night should look towards the acting categories where there’s a much better correlation between the two awards shows.

Though there is rarely much consistency between the Globes and the Oscars, could this “Gravity” and ”12 Years a Slave” Best Director/Best Picture split be a preview of what’s to come? The brutal and moving “12 Years a Slave” remains the Oscar favourite, but "Gravity"'s star power and technical prowess could upset. 2013 was a ridiculously stacked year: Anything could happen.

Like the Golden Globes, years when Best Picture and Best Director haven't lined up on Oscar night are rare. Out of the 85 films that have won Best Picture since 1927, 62 have also won the Best Director trophy. That’s 72 per cent of the time the same film wins -- pretty good odds. The other 28 per cent of the time the winners have been different, as was the case last year when “Argo” won Best Picture but Ang Lee won Best Director for “Life of Pi” (“Argo” actor/director Ben Affleck wasn’t even nominated). McQueen's slavery drama will almost certainly win Best Picture, but Cuaron's Globe win has turned the Best Director category into a total toss up.

Will the 86th annual Academy Awards be the outlier and follow the Golden Globes' example or will “12 Years a Slave” clean up in every category as many have predicted?