My Award Nominations: Sound Editing

Only a little more than a week before the big night. Over the next three days I'll be polishing off my personal nominations, leading up to the unveiling of my top 20 list starting on Tuesday.

For today, I'm tackling the sound categories, beginning with Sound Editing:

Early Oscar Predictions: Sound

Music and sound are amongst the final touches to be put on a film, which means there's usually not much to go on when trying to predict Oscar nominees from a year out. Actioners, war movies, or films of a grand size and scale are as good a bet as any at this stage. Better yet if their crews feature sound designers and mixers you have had brushes with awards success in the past.

My Awards nominations: Sound Editing

The most impressive Sound Editing of 2011 could be heard in:

The Adventures of Tintin (Brent Burge, Chris Ward, David Whitehead):

The deep groans of ships at sea, the resonance of voice-shattered glass, bullets and bazookas and tanks... oh my!

Drive (Lon Bender):

The drive sequences are mesmerizing in their sonic detail, but moments of relative silence are just as tense.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Richard Hymns):

The WHAPs and THWAPS of bone-crunching fisticuffs, the sonic boom of airborne missiles, and all those awesome gadgets and gizmos...

Thor (Michael Babcock, Richard King):

The electrifying pounding of Thor's hammer, the creaks and cracks of the icy frost giants, the threatening machinations of The Destroyer...

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Erik Aadahl, Ethan Van der Ryn):

Tinny robot voices, those distinctively organometalic sound effects, and of course, explosions gallore... KA-BAY!!!

War Horse (Richard Hymns, Gary Rydstrom):

As they did on Saving Private Ryan, the piercing staccato of machine gun fire, the shattering bombast of artillery shells, but also the thunderous rumble of hooves.

Just missed: Thor, Hugo, Super 8, The Tree of Life