The Directors Guild of America (DGA) held the 2013 Directors Guild Awards tonight, honoring the “best” in directing in a variety of mediums, but we here are primarily interested in the award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film, an award very few believed would go to anyone other than Ben Affleck for Argo. Turns out, they were right.
I posted a poll earlier today asking readers to predict who they believed would win and Affleck came out on top with more than 65% of the vote with Steven Spielberg (Lincoln) a distant second.
While Affleck’s win tonight won’t put him in the driver’s seat for an Oscar for Best Director this year, considering he wasn’t nominated, it all but shores up Argo‘s position as the presumptive front-runner for Best Picture, a prediction even the most ardent of Lincoln supporters would have a hard time arguing against at this point.
Lincoln does, however, still have its battles to be fought (and this isn’t to say it is 100% out of the Best Picture race) as I still believe Spielberg to be the front-runner for Best Director, though he faces stiff competition in fellow DGA nominee Ang Lee (Life of Pi) and that “could the Weinsteins actually pull it off?” factor that will follow David O. Russell and Silver Linings Playbook around up to, and until, the Best Picture award is announced. Never count Harvey out.
Along with Affleck, directors nominated for the DGA Award that weren’t nominated for Best Director at the Oscars include Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) and Tom Hooper (Les Miserables).
You can find all my current predictions for the 2013 Oscars right here and I added Affleck’s DGA win to the Oscar Overture, which also includes the winners from the Art Directors Guild Awards, which was also held tonight and saw Anna Karenina (Period), Life of Pi (Fantasy) and Skyfall (Modern) awarded.
