My Award Nominations: Best Sound Mixing

You've seen -- well, heard -- which movies had the most well rendered sounds of the year, in my opinion. Now it's time to examine the movies that best put all of their sounds together into a synchronized whole. Behold the Best Sound Mixing of 2014! (You can't fully appreciate the mix of these clips unless you've got a six-channel surround sound system or something hooked up to your computer, but you get the gist.)

My Award Nominations: Best Sound Editing

For today's entry on my ballot, we're lending an ear to the best sound jobs of 2014. Herewith are my nominees for Best Sound Editing, which will be followed later today by my sound mixing favourites. I usually try to minimize overlap between the two categories, although there are always a couple of titles that deserve recognition in both. You'll just have to guess which of these five will double dip!

'Birdman' and 'Apes' Lead MPSE Nods

On the eve of Oscar morning, the Motion Picture Sound Editors announced their nominees for the year's best achievements in sound design and editing. Birdman and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes lead all contenders with three nods apiece, and both are fine honourees for their excellent sound jobs (although I may be more impressed with Birdman's overall mix than with the editorial).

The most Oscar-indicative category is Best Sound Effects/Foley, which also features Oscar hopefuls Unbroken, Interstellar, Fury, and American Sniper, joined by a pair of Marvel blockbusters in Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Best Sound Effects/Foley
American Sniper
Birdman
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Fury
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
Unbroken
I expect the Oscar five will be a permutation of these eight, but which three drop out? Despite its impressive showing here, I'm just not sure the Apes franchise is embraced as warmly by the Academy as it aught to be. I also don't expect either of the Marvel efforts, but I could certainly be wrong. Fury deserves to be the winner, but Best Picture clout may aid American Sniper in this race.

Review - Fury

It is April, 1945. The second world war draws to an agonizingly bloody close on German soil. Materializing out of a haze of sunlight and gun smoke, a German officer atop a weathered white horse trudges through a scorched battlefield, floating in silence like a ghost amongst the dead bodies and burning debris. There's a sad beauty to this image that greets us at the onset of Fury, steeped in an eerie serenity that the film's title does not suggest.

Naturally, this moment ends in an abrupt and brutal fashion more typical to the rest of this rockem' sockem' war story. Written and directed by David Ayer, many of whose previous films and screenplays (End of Watch, Harsh Times, Training Day) have been gritty studies in rock-hard masculinity, Fury follows the perilous travails of a tank unit as it pushes the Allied advance deeper into enemy territory in the dying days of WWII.

Brad Pitt headlines as Sgt. Don 'Wardaddy' Collier, commander of a 30-ton M4 Sherman tank (the eponymous Fury, whose moniker is scrawled across the cannon barrel as if the bow of a ship) and its testosterone-oozing crew. This includes Shia LaBeouf as its devout trigger man, Michael Peña as its empathetic driver, and Jon Bernthal as its certifiable mechanic. No, not “certified”, “certifiable”.