Argonomics
Ben Affleck and his film Argo are on a roll
● Call it the Affleck Redemption. After being snubbed for an Oscar nomination for best director earlier this month, Ben Affleck scored a win again on Sunday night at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for ensemble in a motion picture.
The win came hours after the film, which also stars Affleck, took the Producers Guild Award on Saturday night — an honour that is one of the leading indicators of Oscar gold. Two weeks ago, Argo won the Golden Globe for best dramatic motion picture, one of the many honours it has recently picked up this season.
Argo heads into next month’s Academy Awards with momentum — and seven nominations, including best picture, supporting actor for Alan Arkin, and adapted screenplay. ( Shockingly, Affleck was not nominated for a directing Oscar, even though he received a Directors Guild of America nomination and won the Golden Globe for director.)
A directing nomination at the Oscars usually goes hand in hand with a best- picture win. When Affleck was snubbed for a directing slot, awards analysts initially were counting Argo out for the best- picture Oscar, along with Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty and Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, which also missed out on directing nominations.
Only once in modern times has a film won best picture without a directing nomination, with 1989’ s Driving Miss Daisy. The other two times came in the show’s early years, at the first Oscars in 1929 with Wings and for 1932’ s Grand Hotel.
“To me this has nothing to do with me, it has to do with the incredible people who were in this movie,” said Affleck, who
also stars in Argo and accepted the SAG prize alongside his cast.
The outlook seems equally golden for Daniel Day- Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway, whose Golden Globe awards two weeks ago were followed on Sunday night with SAG awards. Day- Lewis won the trophy — and a standing ovation — for lead actor as the nation’s 16th president in Lincoln. Lawrence won her award for female actor playing a young widow in the quirky romantic comedy Affleck’s Argo once again proved to be a top contender for Oscar by taking home the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture.
Silver Linings Playbook.
“Now I have this naked statue that means some of you even voted for me, and that is an indescribable feeling,” Lawrence said after explaining she earned her SAG card at age 14 by filming a spot for MTV.