Being snubbed for a Best Director Oscar nomination may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to Ben Affleck.
No, there are no write-in votes allowed for the Academy Awards, so Affleck will not get a statuette this Sunday night for helming the involving, suspenseful, occasionally accurate Argo.
But ever since he was passed over for a nomination, there has been a groundswell of sympathy votes going his way and towards his movie in the preliminary ― as in “lesser” ― awards. That should culminate in a Best Picture Oscar win for the audience-friendly Argo.
If that happens, the film will eclipse Steven Spielberg’s high-minded, talky history lesson, Lincoln, which goes into Sunday’s ceremony with 12 nominations, the highest total for a movie this year. Still, expect Spielberg to add another Oscar for Best Director ― his third ― to his trophy case. And if you have to bet on anything this Oscar season, bet on Daniel Day-Lewis to walk off with his third Oscar for Best Actor for embodying so completely our 16th president. (The oddsmakers of Las Vegas put him as a 1-50 prohibitive favorite.)
If I had a vote in the Academy, I would cast it for Jessica Chastain as the tenacious CIA analyst Maya in Zero Dark Thirty. But again, the tea leaves and preliminary awards all point to a Jennifer Lawrence win for her mentally unstable young widow in Silver Linings Playbook.
The supporting actor category is probably the most competitive and most difficult to predict, because all five nominees are past Oscar winners. Still, the edge has to go to Tommy Lee Jones as cranky Congressman Thaddeus Stevens ― wow, a curmudgeonly legislator ― in Lincoln. And while I thought director Tom Hooper botched the movie version of Les Misérables, it should pull in a few Oscars, including one for scenery-chewing Anne Hathaway as the dying diva Fantine.
Here is a list of this year’s winners, stolen from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, perhaps in time to enter and wipe up in your office pool.
* Best Picture ― Argo
* Best Director ― Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
* Best Actor ―Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
* Best Actress ―Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
* Best Supporting Actor ― Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
* Best Supporting Actress ― Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
* Best Original Screenplay ― Zero Dark Thirty
* Best Adapted Screenplay ― Lincoln
* Best Animated Feature ― Brave
* Best Animated Short ― Paperman
* Best Live-Action Short ― Curfew
* Best Production Design ― Anna Karenina
* Best Cinematography ― Life of Pi
* Best Costume Design ― Anna Karenina
* Best Documentary Feature ― Searching for Sugar Man
* Best Documentary Short ― Inocente
* Best Film Editing ― Argo
* Best Foreign Language Film ― Amour
* Best Original Song ― Skyfall (from Skyfall)
* Best Original Score ― Life of Pi
* Best Makeup ― Les Misérables
* Best Sound Editing ― Skyfall
* Best Visual Effects ― Life of Pi
* Best Sound Mixing ― Lincoln