When you win an Oscar at 26, is there anywhere to go but down? It sure looked that way for one-time pariah Ben Affleck, who may cap one of the most amazing comebacks in Hollywood history with Best Picture and Best Director awards next year.
After sharing the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for “Good Will Hunting’’ with his pal Matt Damon in 1998, Affleck developed into one of Tinseltown’s most popular and highest-paid actors.
Critics weren’t thrilled by the likes of “Pearl Harbor,’’ but Affleck smirked his way to the bank. At least until schadenfreude struck in the form of the notorious flop “Gigli’’ — and his tabloid romance with co-star Jennifer Lopez made the actor an international laughingstock.
Affleck, now 40, has slowly rebuilt his career during the past nine years, including directorial stints on “Gone Baby Gone’’ and “The Town” that drew the kind of praise generally eluding him as an actor.
But he really hit the jackpot this year with the political thriller “Argo,’’ which not only became an instant Oscar contender but a significant popular success.
Affleck’s competitors this year ironically include his former “Good Will Hunting” employer Harvey Weinstein, the Oscar maven who cruised to back-to-back Best Picture wins the past two years with “The Artist’’ and “The King’s Speech.’’
He’s finding the competition much tougher this time around.
It’s not just that Weinstein’s best hope for a three-peat — the quirky dramatic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook”— isn’t connecting with audiences as much as you might expect with glowing reviews and popular lead actors. He’s also facing a deep-pocketed challenge from the major studios, which, in the past, largely sat back and conceded the Oscar game to little-seen indie flicks.
Besides Affleck’s “Argo,’’ which is backed by Warner Bros., DreamWorks has launched an old-school assault on the Oscars in the form of Steven Spielberg’s biopic “Lincoln.’’
Fox’s artsy and expensive 3-D fantasy “Life of Pi’’ is also doing more than respectable numbers, and the next couple of weeks will bring a few more big studio movies that have played extremely well to advance audiences.
Sony’s “Zero Dark Thirty,’’ a thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden from director Kathryn Bigelow (who helmed the Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker’’) has already captured top prizes.
“Les Misérables,’’ an epic adaptation of the stage musical from Universal, has been moving early moviegoers to tears.
That’s a lot of major-studio money up against the indies.
Weinstein could conceivably capture two more slots, but neither the quasi-Scientology drama “The Master’’ (whose ticket sales never matched its outsized hype) nor Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming “Django Unchained’’ — basically a three-hour homage to “Blazing Saddles’’ — seems built to go the distance.
Two much less expensive films about youngsters distributed by the big studios’ specialty arms — Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom’’ (Focus Features) and “Beasts of the Southern Wild’’ (Fox Searchlight) — could sneak into the Best Picture race if there are a full 10 slots this year. And then there’s this year’s foreign-language wild card: the about-to-open “Amour,’’ just named the year’s best picture, period, by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
But when Oscar nominations are announced on Jan. 10 — two weeks earlier than usual, and three days before the Golden Globes are handed out — I’d wager the big boys will be dominating the conversation.
HANDICAPPING THE ACTORS:
Oscar’s Best Actress race looks like a knockdown, drag-out fight between two young actresses who have already been nominated previously — Jennifer Lawrence of “Silver Linings Playbook’’ versus Jessica Chastain of “Zero Dark Thirty.’’
Chastain, who got a supporting nod last year for “The Help,’’ is terrific as a determined CIA analyst who spends a decade hunting down Osama bin Laden while coping with condescending male superiors.
But I’d give the edge to Lawrence (a Best Actress nominee for “Winter’s Bone’’), who plays to the academy’s preference for flashier roles in her performance as a young widow who sets her cap for a former mental patient. It also doesn’t hurt that she carried one of the year’s most popular popcorn movies, “The Hunger Games.’’
Daniel Day-Lewis’ towering performance in “Lincoln’’ looms large over the Best Actor race. His main obstacle is historical: Are Oscar voters comfortable making him the first three-time Best Actor winner in history? (He won previously for “My Left Foot” in 1990 and “There Will Be Blood’’ four years ago).
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