This year’s Best Picture Oscar race is the strangest and hardest to predict in years. After the nominations were announced ‘Lincoln’, with the most noms: 12 and a Best director nom for Spielberg became the obvious front runner. Two other major contenders ‘Zero Dark Thirty’s’ director Kathryn Bigelow and ‘Argo’s’ director Ben Affleck were snubbed for Best director, in what will be remembered as one of the worst snubs in Oscar history. Lincoln’s easy victory was changed this   weekend. Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’ has steadily won all of the major precursor awards: the Critic’s Choice for Best Pic and Dir., the Golden Globe for Best Drama, the Producer’s Guild for best produced film, the Screen Actors Guild for best ensemble cast and then finally last weekend won the Director’s Guild Award for Ben Affleck. The DGA is significant because the DGA winner has gone on to win Best Picture on all but 13 occasions in the last 64 years! No film has ever won all the aforementioned precursor awards before, and only one film (Apollo 13) has won the SAG, PGA and DGA and not won Best Picture. However only one film in the past 85 years has won Best Picture without getting a Director nomination (Driving Miss Daisy). Having seen Lincoln last night I can now say that ‘Argo’ is not only a better film but also a more ‘Oscar-winning’ film. I predict this year that ‘Argo’ will win Best Picture with Steven Spielberg winning Best Director, first time there is a Picture Director split since 2006 when Ang Lee won Best Director for ‘Brokeback Mountain’ while ‘Crash’ won Best Picture. This is the first year in 6 years that I’m ambivalent about both ‘Lincoln’ or ‘Argo’ winning, in my opinion ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ should win and ‘The Master’ should have been nominated.