One Category at a Time: Best Sound Mixing

I feel like every year it gets harder and harder to predict what the Academy as a whole takes into consideration when voting on Best Sound Mixing. Even among the most avid film enthusiasts, the particulars of this craft can be mysterious and confusing. I sometimes struggle myself to decide what constitutes the finest achievement of the year (especially so this year), so trying to speculate as to what others will decide is next to an impossible task.

It brings me no pride to confess that this is the category with my poorest prediction record (roughly 38%), and even the corresponding industry guild -- the CAS, which announces its winners tomorrow -- hasn't matched up all that often: Only 6 of the last 13 CAS champs repeated with the Academy.

But there is one constant that can usually be counted on to pad your Oscar stats: Best Sound Mixing loves musicals.

My Award Nominations: Sound Mixing

Last week I gave the sound designers and editors their due, and today I look at those who best implemented their sounds into the acoustic machinery. As usual, there's often some overlap between my nominees for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing (though not nearly as much overlap as the Academy's), so two movies are double-dipping as the best sounding film of the year for me. Find out which two they are, plus three other terrifically mixed projects after the jump.