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15 Directors More Worthy Of Awards Than Ben Affleck

Look, I like Ben Affleck. I’m happy for his success. I loved Argo. He did a bang-up job on it and deserves immense credit for helming a terrific movie. I thought Gone Baby Gone was a real accomplishment and one of the best movies of its year, and he has continued to produce quality work since then, even though I still consider that one to be his greatest work so far. But honestly, best director of the year? And best film of the year? There has been too much talent this year that naturally had to be overlooked. Any list of five directors was going to leave out some enormously skilled filmmakers who did great work this year. To prove it, here’s a list of directors whose work I would argue is more deserving of a Golden Globe statue or Oscar write-in vote than that of our dear Mr. Ben Affleck.

[h2]7: Sam Mendes[/h2]
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Roger Deakins is the recipient of the vast majority of awards attention directed at Skyfall, and rightly so. He’s long overdue for an Oscar statue; his work has been top tier for the past couple of decades. But Sam Mendes was tasked with righting the 007 ship after the writers’ strike shipwreck that was Quantum of Solace, and he delivered a meditation of obsolescence and relevance of dated tools in a digital era—in the context of a James Bond movie. Who else has managed that before?

Capturing all the classic qualities of a cheeky and exciting Bond film while assigning your movie serious credibility as a work of drama and character study is not easy, and pulling it off with style and grace like Mendes does here is tempting to overlook. He’s been one of my favourite directors for some time and it’s because he’s constantly surprising us with efforts like this one.

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