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By Joey Magidson
Film Contributor

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I’ve always had a soft spot for films that are directed by actors. In one of my recent pieces, I spoke about how the Academy looks at actors who direct. Now, I’ll be continuing my interest by focusing in on which of these multi-hyphenates are the best at what they do.

By and large, the films that actors make when they choose directorial projects have some sort of significance for them or at least play to their strengths, so disasters are few and far between. This makes it a lot of fun to celebrate the best of the bunch, since I’m able to draw from a larger pool than you normally can when looking at one particular type of filmmaker.

I take some comfort in knowing that most films directed by actors tend to be at least decent, if not better. I see almost 300 movies in a given year (in 2012 I saw 290 in total), so I undoubtedly see a lot of garbage to go along with the gems, but the flicks that actor-directors put out almost never turn out terrible.

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By Joey Magidson
Film Contributor

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No matter how we talk about the Oscar race right now, the discussion is fed through the prism of both the Best Picture candidacy of Argo and the Best Director snub of Ben Affleck. Especially now that the Producers Guild crowned Argo with their top prize over the weekend and the Screen Actors Guild did the same just hours ago, all roads of discussion go through that flick and Affleck.

One angle that I haven’t really discussed much yet is the fact that Affleck is still primarily an actor transitioning to being a director as well. This is only his third film, and while he’s seen Oscar nominations for supporting roles in both of his films (Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone and Jeremy Renner for The Town), no wins have come for any of his directorial outings.

This time around, Argo was supposed to be the movie that got him over the hump. In one regard, it did, since the film is nominated for seven Academy Awards and is in serious contention to win at least three or four of them. Obviously, the one place it’s notoriously not competing in is the Best Director category. Affleck was looked at as perhaps the leader of the pack for much of the season, but he wound up out in the cold on nomination morning.

The snub begs the question of whether the Academy truly has the soft spot for films directed by actors that some presume exists. Did Argo get the love it did because of — or in spite of — the admiration voters had for Affleck’s efforts?

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By Rachel Bennett
Television Editor & Columnist

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Movies used to be gold standard for actors, with George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio leaving the small screen for the big to achieve great professional and financial success.

However, times are changing, and many actors who left TV to work in movies are coming back, including Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams and Michael J. Fox. Due to the addition of cable and subscription-based original programming, better roles are being created that will give actors a chance for the recognition, awards and job security that movies no longer  provide. Just look at Claire Danes, who returned to TV to star in Showtime’s Homeland, for which she’s nominated for an Emmy.

There are several actors who should return to TV, but not all of them will. Take a look at the top 10 TV stars who’ve left TV but should return:

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By Samuel Negin

A Broadway revival of Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner‘s 1965 musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, which became a 1970 movie of the same name starring Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford, has opened on Broadway and the reviews are in.

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Few actors seem timeless, as if they could have fit into a Golden Age film just as easily as a film of the present day, but one who does is Ralph Fiennes.

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An Associated Press article filed yesterday by Mead Gruver — like an upcoming film with awards hopes — asks: “Did Butch Cassidy, the notorious Old West outlaw who most historians believe perished in a 1908 shootout in Bolivia, actually survive that battle and live to old age…?” (You may recall that George Roy Hill’s classic 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” which stars Paul Newman as Butch and Robert Redford as Sundance, leaves the matter unresolved, ending on a freeze frame of the wounded and cornered duo emerging from their hiding place, guns ablaze, to confront their adversaries.)

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While hanging out in the Tribeca press lounge on Sunday afternoon, I ran into my friend/fellow film pundit Ed Douglas, who had been at the festival all week and told me that the best film that he’d seen, to that point, was a sequel to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969). I chuckled and said that I thought a sequel to that classic buddy movie had already been made, referring to “The Sting” (1973), which obviously involved different characters but not coincidentally re-teamed the earlier film’s director (George Roy Hill) and stars (Paul Newman and Robert Redford). No, no, Douglas said, this one was literally a sequel to the first, albeit with the different actors inhabiting the iconic parts of the bandits. It sounded sacrilegious to me, but I respect Douglas, so I got on the phone with the film’s publicist, who was kind enough to provide me with a ticket to the second public screening of the film later that evening.

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Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to chat by phone for about 35 minutes with the 27-year-old actor Andrew Garfield, who is a best supporting actor Golden Globe nominee and Oscar hopeful for his performance as Eduardo Saverin in David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” Garfield’s Saverin is a cool, easygoing, endlessly-likable character who is always financially and emotionally supportive of his friend/business partner Mark Zuckerberg, but who lacks Zuckerberg’s singular focus, long-term vision, and utter ruthlessness, and is consequently betrayed in a most cold-blooded manner. (One almost expects him to say, “Et tu, Mark?”) In my humble opinion, he is nothing short of the emotional center of the film.

Garfield, a classically-trained theater actor, made his big screen debut in Robert Redford’s “Lions for Lambs” (2007); won a BAFTA Award for best TV actor for the British telefilm “Boy A” (2007); co-starred with Heath Ledger in his last film, Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” (2009); and recently played the shared love interest of Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan in Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” (2010) and the main character in Spike Jonze’s 29-minute short “I’m Here.” When we spoke, he had just flown back to Los Angeles from London for a short break from filming the movie that will soon turn him into a household name and internationally-recognized celebrity, the still untitled reboot of the “Spider-Man” franchise, in which he is replacing Tobey Maguire as the title character. Clearly, it is Andrew Garfield’s moment.

Over the course of our conversation — audio clips of which you can hear below — Garfield and I discussed all of the above, and much more…

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• Deadline New York: Mike Fleming confirms Lionsgate’s second big purchase out of the Toronto International Film Festival following their earlier deal for Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator“: John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” for which the studio intends to mount best picture and best actress (Nicole Kidman) campaigns.
• New York Times: Michael Cieply hears Casey Affleck‘s confession that his new doc “I’m Still Here,” which chronicles the shocking mental and physical devolution of his brother-in-law/Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix (and was panned at both Venice and Toronto), was nothing more than performance art.
• In Contention: Kris Tapley returns from a screening of the controversial doc “Catfish,” which Universal picked up out of Sundance earlier this year and is releasing in theaters today, and argues that it is “just as defining of where we are as a society” as “The Social Network.”
• 24 Frames: Steven Zeitchik thinks that Clint Eastwood‘s “Hereafter” may finally put a stop to his recent cold-streak at the Oscars (“Changeling,” “Gran Torino,” and “Invictus” all failed to live up to expectations), ignoring the fact that the film has already been widely pummeled by critics.
• Thompson on Hollywood: Anne Thompson learns that the North American rights for Pedro Almodovar‘s “The Skin That I Inhabit,” which will star star Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya and be released in November 2011, have been acquired by Sony Pictures classics, marking the 10th collaboration between the director and the studio.
• Hollywood-Elsewhere: Jeff Wells posts the recently-released one-sheet for Edward Zwick’s “Love and Other Drugs” and says it “conveys comfort, ease, self-satisfaction [but] certainly doesn’t indicate heavy-osity. It seems to be saying, “All that ‘this movie is really exceptional’ and ‘[Anne] Hathaway kills as a Parkinson’s sufferer’ stuff you were reading about earlier this year? Maybe or maybe not.”
• The Hollywood Reporter: Etan Viessing describes the Toronto International Film Festival’s “traditional role as a festival launching pad for foreign-language films,” and explains why it is particularly appreciated by foreign filmmakers this year.
• The Wrap: Daniel Frankel shares the specifics of the rather unique pricing model that Magnolia and the Green Film Company announced will be in effect for their upcoming documentary “Freakonomics.”
• The Playlist: Kevin Jagernauth says that IFC Films has made a decision to “play with fire” (read: Harvey Weinstein) by picking up the worldwide rights to Barry Avrich’s documentary “Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project.”
• PopWatch: Annie Barrett questions all the fuss surrounding Gabby Sidibe’s Elle cover photo, which some suspect was touched up to lighten her skin color.
• The Bay Citizen: Scott James reports on Oscar winner/feminist icon (thanks to “Thelma & Louise”) Geena Davis’s crusade against gender bias in entertainment and the media, noting that a study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has found that “there were three male characters for every one female” in G-rated movies from the past 15 years.
• Twitter: Perez Hilton, “The Queen of Mean,” gives a Twitter-shoutout to Melena Ryzik, “The Carpetbagger.” There’s got to be a story — literally and figuratively — behind that.

Photo: A scene from the controversial new doc “Catfish.” Credit: Universal.

• Roger Ebert’s Journal: Roger Ebert weighs in on the idea of “afterlife” within his blog post on Clint Eastwood’s spiritual drama “Hereafter,” which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this week.
• Oscar Watch: Dave Karger contemplates a “Toronto de ja vu” as the festival’s Oscar buzz once again surrounds acclaimed directors Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire” in 2008 and “127 Hours” this year) and Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler” in 2008 and “Black Swan” this year).

• The Playlist: Kevin Jagernauth reviews the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, calling John Sayles‘s American-Philippine war story “Amigo” the “antidote” to Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator.”
• Deadline New York: Mike Fleming announces the latest purchase out of Toronto, reporting that Sony has acquired the domestic rights to Dennis Villeneuve‘s “Incendies.”
• Movieline: S.T. Vanairsdale interviews Michael Sheen about “Beautiful Boy,” the actor’s latest film to play at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Sheen addresses the dynamics of the relationship between his character and that of his co-star, Maria Bello.

• In Contention: Guy Lodge pays tribute to French nouvelle vague master Claude Chabrol, who passed away this past weekend at the age of 80.

• The Celebrity Café: Gina DeFalco reports that “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) star and Golden Globe winner Kevin McCarthy has died at 96, noting he was Marilyn Monroe’s last [living] co-star.

Photo: Maria Bello and Michael Sheen in “Beautiful Boy.” Credit: ?.