The freight train that is Argo kept on trucking last night.  Though the film’s Best Picture Oscar chances were all but dashed when Ben Affleck was snubbed for Best Director (it’s incredibly rare for a movie to win Best Picture without a Best Director nomination), the film picked up the top awards at two major guilds—the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild.  Now two becomes three, as the Directors Guild Awards were held last night and Argo pulled off the hat trick by landing Affleck the Best Director DGA trophy.

There is one major precedent that everyone keeps pointing towards with regards to Argo: 1995’s Apollo 13.  That film won the PGA, DGA, and SAG awards, only to find Ron Howard left out of the Best Director Oscar nominations and it ultimately lost Best Picture to Braveheart.  Is Argo in the same boat as Apollo 13 or can it pull off the win?  Furthermore, who wins Best Director at the Oscars?  Hit the jump for more, along with the full list of DGA winners that includes Looper’s Rian Johnson for his work on Breaking Bad and GirlsLena Dunham.

argo-poster

Though Lincoln still remains the most-nominated Best Picture contender, it’s hard to justify not calling Argo our current Best Picture frontrunner.  I’m not convinced that the race is over just yet, but one thing’s for sure: this has been an incredibly nutty awards season.  The question now becomes, who wins Best Director?  It's pretty wide open, but it's hard to see the Academy giving it to Steven Spielberg and not also naming Lincoln Best Picture, so if Argo takes Best Picture I think someone other than Spielberg could be taking home Best Director.  

It’ll be interesting to see how the conversation plays out over the next few weeks.  Did the guilds simply go with Argo in spite of Affleck’s Oscar snub or is the film now the consensus “Best Picture?”  Will the Academy follow suit or will some other film (Lincoln, Life of Pi, even Silver Linings Playbook) come away the victor?  We should have a better idea of how things are shaping up in the coming weeks, but for now Argo appears to be the one to beat.  I’ll have a more in-depth breakdown of the Oscar race along with my final predictions closer to the ceremony.

Here’s the list of DGA winners:

Best Feature Film – Ben Affleck, Argo

Best Documentary Feature – Malik Bendjelloul, Searching for Sugar Man

Best Drama Series – Rian Johnson, Breaking Bad (“Fifty-One”)

Best Comedy Series – Lena Dunham, Girls (“Pilot”)

Best TV Miniseries – Jay Roach, Game Change

Best Reality Series – Brian Smith, Master Chef