One Category at a Time: Best Supporting Actor

Strangely enough, before the critics started announcing their winners back in December, this seemed like the most nebulous category. Now it's one of the most galvanized, with one name dominating the conversation (give or take an odd Golden Globes loss).

One Category at a Time: Sound Mixing

This is another one of those categories that seems fairly transparent from afar. I suspect one film to be unanimously predicted by pundits, and then to win, naturally. But even though it looks to be an open and shut case, the other nominees sport excellent sound work, and very much deserve the recognition that their nominations imply.

The sound branch nominated four of the same titles that were cited by the Cinema Audio Society, with only Iron Man 3 failing to translate that CAS nod into an Oscar nod. That is all very usual. Also very usual is the high degree of overlap between this category and Best Sound Editing. Only one of the Sound Mixing nominees did not receive an accompanying nomination in its brother category, and that's the one we'll start with...