One Category at a Time: Best Sound Mixing

Something the Sound branch has often showed us in recent years is that it has no problem lining up the Best Picture frontrunners for Best Sound Mixing. The Best Picture winner has been nominated here four years running, so you might do well to pick and choose titles from your pool of predicted Best Picture nominees as potential Sound Mixing contenders.

To that end, I'm making a somewhat experimental prediction for The Tree of Life, mixed by Jeremy Pierson, Christopher Scarabosio, and Craig Berkey. Call this a hunch, but there always seems to be a critically respected film whose sound design does not stand out as an obvious nominee in this field.

I'm also gonna make another outlandish guess for an not-so-obvious contender, David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I don't know if this is exactly an Oscar movie, but his last two films (Benjamin Button and The Social Network) have earned nominations for Sound Mixing despite mixes that are comparatively subtle and don't draw much attention to themselves.

Conversely, there always seems to be a critically detested film whose sound design is the most obvious of nominees in this field. That could be any number of summer blockbusters this year, but I'm going with Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Fourteen-time nominee Greg P. Russell is at the mixing board once again, and despite working on projects that are seldom Academy-friendly, his peers in the Sound branch always seem to recognize the quality of his work.

Getting back to the Best Picture contenders with possible appeal to the Sound branch, it's hard to argue with War Horse. War movies are a reasonable bet for all the combat sounds they incorporate, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Spielberg enlist his Oscar-winning sound team from Saving Private Ryan, who are sure to do a bang-up job.

And what of the critically favoured summer actioner? There's always at least one, and it'll probably be the token blockbuster Best Picture nominee. I'm going with Super 8 (assuming it ends up being critically favoured). J.J. Abrams has proven that he can direct the soundtrack of loud sci-fi action very capably, and the film's trailer seems to boast plenty of it.

Predicted five:
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Super 8
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Also consider: The Adventures of Tintin, Captain America, Cowboys and Aliens, The Green Lantern, Thor (Damn, there are a lot of superhero movies this summer! Won't Hollywood run out at some point?)