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:

Review - Everest

The Himalayas are an astonishing sight (or so I assume – never been there), and Mt. Everest reigns supreme. Drawing climbers from around the globe with the tantalizing challenge of standing at the very top of the world, Earth's highest mountain inspires awe, but what it deserves even more is reverence.
Beautiful things can be deadly, and this is no place for those who fear death.

It was a tragic lesson learned in the spring of 1996 when two commercial mountaineering outfits became stranded on the summit in the midst of a ferocious blizzard. Everest dramatizes this catastrophe extensively, cobbled together from what survivor accounts could be disseminated.

Unknown director Baltasar Kormákur was probably the least expected name to oversee a big-budget fall studio project with a large, starry cast. Accordingly, the movie he's delivered is not quite what you'd expect either. In fact, it's harder to peg down than ropes to an ice face in whiteout conditions.

Early Oscar Predictions: Music

Obviously, it's impossible to judge a film's soundtrack before it's released, or even recorded which may be the case with many of this year's upcoming prospects. Thankfully for us obsessive prognosticators, the music branch has some old habits that can lay the foundation for early guesswork. For starters, they are notoriously insular, usually only choosing one or two first-time nominees per year in the Best Original Score category.

So who are some branch favourites with multiple irons in the fire this year?

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.