'Argo's' big wins at the Golden Globes shifts some attention in the Oscar best picture race from 'Lincoln' and 'Silver Linings Playbook.'

With six weeks until the Academy Awards are handed out Feb. 24, "Lincoln," starring Daniel Day-Lewis, remains a front-runner. Its 12 Oscar nominations topped all other movies in total number of nods.

But Ben Affleck's "Argo" is now back in the mix. The filmmaker was snubbed for a directing Oscar nomination last week — an ominous sign for its best picture prospects, given that it's been 23 years since a movie won best picture without its helmer being nominated in the director category.

Yet the film about events surrounding the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis picked up the top prize at the Critics' Choice Awards on Thursday and then laurels at the Globes, where there was hearty cheering for Affleck and his film. Some pundits now believe the directing snub could create a sympathy vote of sorts.

Hovering in the background is David O. Russell's mental-illness dramedy "Silver Linings," which last week became the first film in more than 30 years to garner Oscar nominations for best picture, director, screenplay and all four acting categories. Weinstein famously outmaneuvered a Spielberg drama with a lighter film once before: The mogul's "Shakespeare in Love" upset "Saving Private Ryan" at the 1999 Academy Awards.

Fading, but not entirely out of the best picture race, is "Zero Dark Thirty," a movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden that won early critics awards but has caught heat in Washington over its portrayal of torture. Its director,Kathryn Bigelow, was passed over for an Oscar nomination as well.

Bigelow, along with screenwriter Mark Boal and Sony Pictures, has strained to answer some of the criticisms and questions about the film, and backstage at the Golden Globes star Jessica Chastain struggled to respond when asked whether she had met the real-life CIA agent her character is based on. (Meanwhile, Affleck was able to bolster the case for his movie by trotting out the real-life CIA agent his movie is based on.)

To win best picture, each contender now will embrace a distinct strategy before the 12-day Oscar voting period begins Feb. 8.

Affleck will try to capitalize on the Globes moment by wooing voters for the Screen Actors Guild awards and Directors Guild of America awards; SAG will hand out its prizes Jan. 27 and the DGA follows a week later. Accolades from those groups could help convince the academy membership that the film merits high-profile recognition the directors branch apparently didn't think the film deserved.

After taking a playful jab at the academy at the Critics' Choice Awards Thursday that suggested the Oscar snub was bothering him — he began his acceptance speech by saying "I would like to thank the academy" and then sarcastically added, "This is the one that counts" — Affleck is now playing the gracious card.

"I'm an enormous admirer of the academy," Affleck said Sunday night, insisting the director snub was not on his mind. Fellow "Argo" producer George Clooney carefully noted that the film was still very much in contention for best picture. "It's disappointing but we're … not dead yet," he said.

Meanwhile, the team behind "Lincoln" is trying its own gambit: emphasizing the film's heft.

Star Daniel Day-Lewis, notoriously shy with the media, came backstage after winning the Golden Globe for actor in a drama and gave one of the longest and most energetic post-award press conferences of the night, turning philosophical about the man he was representing.

"I couldn't help wondering whether, even if [Lincoln] hadn't have been assassinated, maybe he wouldn't have survived very long," Day-Lewis said. "It felt to me that he spent himself in the service of that country at that moment in time. Who knows if he would have ever been able to oversee Reconstruction, but I think the history of the next hundred years would have been very substantially different had he been able to do that."

GOLDEN GLOBES 2013: List | Red Carpet | Winners | Show moments | Quotes

And then there was Sunday night's most unexpected guest: Bill Clinton. To the casual viewer, the appearance of the 42nd president on stage at the Golden Globes was a nice bonus, a substantive counterpoint to the red-carpet hoopla. But it was also a strategic move on the part of Spielberg, long a serious fundraiser for Democrats: Clinton is thought to be well-liked by large swaths of the academy membership, and his endorsement seemed designed to underscore "Lincoln's" gravitas.

In some ways, Spielberg and the team handling the campaign for studios DreamWorks and Disney was taking a page from the campaign playbook of Weinstein, who has often recruited big names to endorse his films. Weinstein has won two best picture Oscars back to back, in part by enlisting the public support of everyone from Charlie Chaplin's granddaughters ("The Artist") to Mick Jagger("The King's Speech").

This season, Weinstein has already secured the blessing of TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz for "Silver Linings Playbook," which is about a man who struggles with bipolar disorder and is prone to fits of rage. The syndicated host took the podium at a recent event for the film and proclaimed its relevance to the mass shooting tragedy in Newtown, Conn. More such endorsements are expected.

On the acting prize front, Weinstein is fighting to see if "Silver Linings" star Jennifer Lawrence can top Chastain at the Academy Awards. Lawrence and Chastain both took home prizes at the Globes (they were competing in different categories), offering little clarity on their head-to-head race for the lead actress Oscar. Weinstein also received a boost when Christoph Waltz, who stars as a silver-tongued bounty hunter in the company's "Django Unchained," notched a mild upset of favorites such as Tommy Lee Jones and Alan Arkin, ensuring that the supporting actor race has no odds-on favorite.

The Globes did further cement Day-Lewis' front-runner status for the lead actor Oscar and Anne Hathaway's candidacy for the supporting actress Academy Award for her turn in "Les Misérables."

steve.zeitchik@latimes.com

glenn.whipp@latimes.com