Anton Corbijn's "Control" screened again last night for the SAG Nominating Committee, and the reaction was pretty exceptional.  Exceptional because nearly the entire crowd waited an extra 30 minutes for actor Sam Riley to show up because his plane had been .  Seriously, maybe ten people out of at least a hundred left the auditorium.

I was moderating, and the only alternative was to sit down up front with the film's uber-cool producer, Orian Williams.  We bandied about something resembling a Q&A whilst awaiting Riley's arrival, and it was good for the crowd to get the background Williams had to offer.  Then Sam shuffled in, jet-lagged with luggage in tow.

"Hello everybody!"

Cheers and applause, naturally.  They love this guy.  He's eminently likeable, has a superb sense of humor, and even though he was just fine folding shirts over a year ago, he's been a sport with the awards campaign particulars.

Anyway, I've done a lot of these things, and it's pretty special for a crowd to wait this long to hear an actor -- an unknown, at that -- speak about his or her performance in a film.  We didn't wrap up until at least an hour after the film's credits had rolled, and that's unusual to say the least.

Riley had just flown in from New York, where his girlfriend, Alexandra Maria Lara (who also stars in the film) had just atteneded the premiere of "Youth Without Youth."  One attendee afterwards told the young actor that "Control" might be "one of the best films [he's] seen in years."  Let's see if that love translates throughout the awards season.