For the 74-year-old former Spaghetti Western star has a hat trick worth of nominations this year that also includes a best actor's nod for his performance as the crusty fight manager Frankie Dunn in "Million Dollar Baby."
Two other actors from the film are not only up for awards but considered favourites in their categories - Hilary Swank for best actress and Morgan Freeman for best supporting actor.
Eastwood has never won a best actor's award and is not likely to do so this year even though he has been a commanding on-screen presence for decades, playing such classic film heroes as "Dirty Harry," the San Francisco cop who challenges street punks to "make my day."
But Jamie Foxx is the odds-on favourite to win best actor for his portrayal of Ray Charles in "Ray".
Eastwood has won a best picture and best director's Oscar before - in 1993 for "Unforgiven" and many say his "Mystic River" should have won last year's best picture award over the third and final Hobbit drama, "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."
Fairness is not necessarily an Oscar trait and some of greatest filmmakers have not won a best director's gold statuette, including Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles. Scorsese, one of the giants of American movie making, is in their company - he never won an Oscar for directing despite creating such films as "Raging Bull," "Taxi Driver" and "Goodfellas."
But this year the 62-year-old Scorsese was supposed to have his best shot in decades because he created a film of the sort that traditionally wins Oscars.
Like such previous such winners as "Gladiator," "Titanic" and "The English Patient," "The Aviator" is an epic and it is also an epic about Hollywood's glamour days of the 1930s and 40s no less.
It snared 11 nominations, the most of any film this year, and two of its high-profile stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett, are also vying for Oscars as is veteran Alan Alda.
And maybe it would be the front-runner if "Million Dollar Baby" had not joined the Oscar fight at the last minute with an early release. Also nominated for best film this year are comedy "Sideways," "Ray," and "Finding Neverland," about Peter Pan's creator, J.M. Barrie.
While "Aviator" is filmmaking on a grand scale, including a harrowing air crash, "Million Dollar Baby" is its near polar opposite - small in scale and as dramatic, touching and troublesome a story as you could find.