Sunday 27 January 2013

Argo Now the Frontrunner for Best Picture Oscar

In the ever-tightening race to see which of the 9 nominees for Best Picture will take home the Oscar, the odds are definitely in Argo's favor after this weekend.

Yesterday, the Ben Affleck-directed thriller won top honors, the Darryl F. Zanuck Award, from the Producers Guild of America. Argo then won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at tonight's Screen Actors Guild awards. So with both the actors and producers' blocs voting to honor Argo with their top prizes, the sure money for the Oscar is now on Argo.  (Argo also won the prize for best drama film at the Golden Globes.)

That doesn't mean Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is out of the running. After all, it did earn the most Academy Award nominations, and Spielberg got a Best Director nomination while Affleck didn't, which would certainly indicate there were enough Oscar voters who opted not to cast their ballots for Affleck and his movie.

But as The Hollywood Reporter points out, Affleck's Oscar snub in the Best Director category doesn't, despite precedence, mean that his film can't win Best Picture as "the best director Oscar nominees are determined by only six percent of the Academy's entire membership (the directors branch), whereas the winner of the best picture Oscar is determined by not only that six percent but the other 94 percent."

And which bloc makes up the majority of that other 94%? Actors.

Other SAG film winners include Lincoln's Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook, while Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for Les Miserables. All of them are the odds-on favorites to win in those same categories at the Academy Awards on February 24. SAG also honored Skyfall for Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture.

So with Zero Dark Thirty seemingly losing heat after so many headlines over its depiction of torture and with Lincoln now losing both the PGA and SAG prizes, things certainly do bode well for Argo come Oscar night. Remember that when betting in your Oscar pool at work!


Source : ign[dot]com

No comments:

Post a Comment