One Category at a Time: Original Score

There's nothing more frustrating for an awards pundit than being able to narrow a category down to two realistic outcomes, but then being forced to flip a coin between them. So it is this year with Best Original Score, which is, for me, an even more hair-pulling exercise in prediction waffling than the tightly contested Best Director and Picture races.

But first, let's whittle things down with some process of elimination.

'Birdman' Complicates Sound Mixing Race with CAS Win

In a busy guild evening that also included the WGA and the MHG, The Cinema Audio Society announced their picks for the best mixed soundtracks of the year last night. While the former two guilds decided on winners that basically align with the current pundit logic of who will win the respective Oscar categories for writing and makeup (The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and possibly Guardians of the Galaxy), the CAS has thrown the Best Sound Mixing contest for a bit of a loop.

Birdman, with its artfully arranged sonic subtleties and crazy guild momentum, bested its louder competitors (and fellow Oscar nominees) American Sniper and Interstellar. Alejandro G. Inarritu's backstage dramedy is clearly the industry favourite overall, primed to claim the Best Picture Oscar in a week's time, but it would just make such an atypical winner in this field. Even Hugo had more conspicuous sound work.

My Award Nominations: Best Visual Effects

This is usually one of the tougher craft categories for me to decide my favourites. The photorealism of CGI these days is so evolved that it's hard to assess which effects are "better" than others (unless the effect is noticeably bad).

Inevitably, my own criteria boils down to some vague combination of the effects' technical excellence, their originality, and how effectively they're used to support the much bigger 'effect' of the movie experience. For instance, no one's going to argue that a Michael Bay explosion fest doesn't have highly accomplished effects work, but its always delivered in a visually messy and confusing fashion, essentially wasting the efforts of the hardworking technicians, animators, matte painters, texture artists, etc.

To that end, the following craftspeople nominated for my own Best Visual Effects honour can thank the directors of their respective movies for being filmmakers of taste and substance, who know how to utilize special effects to serve the story instead of distract from it.

VES Makes Right Call on Apes, Over-praises Big Hero 6

The Visual Effects Society declared its superlatives for the 2014 year in film last night, and the big victor was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, taking home three trophies including the top prize of Best Visual Effects in an Effects-Driven Film. Can't argue with that assessment, although the Academy might. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was similarly successful with the guild on 2012, only to be pipped by the prestige veneer of Hugo. Interstellar -- which won a single VES Award for its awesome Tesseract -- seems like it's in a position to pull off a similar coup.

"Apes at VES... strong. Apes at Academy... weak."

Other feature film winners include Birdman for supporting fx (easy call), and X-Men: Days of Future Past picking up two awards for the dazzling work in that kitchen sequence.

On the animated side of things, the group continued their maddening pattern of handing all four applicable categories to the same film, the beneficiary being
Big Hero 6. Look, it had really cool simulation effects animation and certainly deserved to win something (namely, that character animation category which it should have won at the ANNIES), but the work in How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Boxtrolls is equally impressive. Seriously, when was the last time the VES spread the wealth in these categories? I'm struggling to think of a year when there wasn't a sweeper.

Check out all the winners after the cut.

One Category at a Time: Sound Editing

For the first time in as long as I can remember, none of the Academy's nominees for Best Sound Editing are ones I would have nominated myself for my own personal ballot. But that's not to imply that the sound branch has dropped the ball. Quite the opposite, as the five they settled on are a most respectable lineup.

It speaks more to the diversity and high quality of the work from which to choose, and there's never a dearth of aural accomplishments in a town that cranks out bombastic blockbusters and sonic showcases with such exhausting regularity.

It's worth noting that the Academy at large will sometimes throw a bone to the 'loud' action movies in this category over Best Picture nominees (Skyfall,
The Dark Knight, and The Bourne Ultimatum are recent examples), although if they can have their cake and eat it too, they will; Best Picture nominees that are also 'loud' movies -- such as Gravity, Zero Dark Thirty, Inception or The Hurt Locker -- are hard to beat.

One Category at a Time: Sound Mixing

The sound categories are one arena where the Academy and I haven't always seen eye to eye -- or heard ear to ear, if you will. Only two of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Sound Mixing are represented on my own personal ballot, which is at least two more than I can say about our complete lack of overlap in Best Sound Editing (which I'll dig into on Thursday).

Still, even if I don't agree that whatever they deem to be the best is actually the best, they've never voted for a movie whose sound mix is outright bad. But this year there's a very real possibility of that happening.

What's that, Matt? Speak up!

I can't hear you over this intentionally muddled sound mix!

My Award Nominations: Best Original Score

Happy Superbowl Sunday, everyone! Today's updates to my own personal awards ballot are all about the music.

It was a remarkably rich and diverse year for film scoring, and I had a tough time narrowing my preferences down to just the five Best Original Scores. It was a bit tougher find suitable candidates for the adapted scores, but I'll get to those this afternoon.

Here are the originals. Have a listen!

One Category at a Time: Visual Effects

I am pleased to report that for the first time in six -- count 'em, six -- years, the Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Cinematography will NOT be going to the same film. Huzzah!

A lot of that has to do with this being the first time since the Best Visual Effects category expanded to five, that a Best Picture nominee has not been represented. This means we can't fall back on the reliable 'Best-Pic-nominees-never-lose' rule that has held in this category since the 70s.

But then what yard stick do we use to assess the chances of the five films recognized this year for their sensational illusions?

That 'Best-Pic-nominees-never-lose' rule got me thinking about the directors who have helmed the most recent winners in this category, going back as far as the 2008/09 season:

-David Fincher
-James Cameron
-Christopher Nolan
-Martin Scorsese
-Ang Lee
-Alfonso Cuaron

Guys, that's an impressive list... in fact, that list is more than impressive.
That list is amazing.
That list is better than the list of the six most recent winners for Best Director!

In a Best Visual Effects race in which no Best Picture nominee is present, could it be that the name of the director behind the film holds enough clout to make the difference? If so, then it certainly bodes well for one nominee, whose director is already on that more-than-impressive list...

One Category at a Time: Production Design

2014 was, in my opinion, a pretty awesome year for production designers. There was an extremely rich variety of work on display, from trippy sci-fi to austere period pieces, and from autere sci-fi to trippy period pieces! It's a shame that only five can be honoured by the Academy (the guild has three categories over which to spread the wealth), because I can definitely think of at least ten worthy of a nomination.

And yet, as outstanding as so many sets were in so many movies this year, there's only one that has rightful claim to this award. And fortunately, that's the one on track to win.

87th Academy Award Nominations!!!

Oscar noms are here! And as is always the case on this most exciting of mornings, the Academy had a handful of surprises to keep us interested.

I think the biggest takeaway from this year's crop is that for the first time since shifting to the variable number of nominees, the Best Picture race yielded less than nine contenders. Instead, we have eight, all of which I predicted, but my ninth prediction (Nightcrawler) was obviously less beloved than all those guilds suggested.

The nomination leaders are Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel, racking up nine apiece. Close behind was The Imitation Game with eight, followed by Boyhood and American Sniper with six.

So what to glean from all this? To my eyes, this is now a three horse race between The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, and Boyhood. They are the only Best Picture nominees to additionally turn up in the three essential categories of director, screenplay, and editing.

The big losers of the day? Well, hard as it may be to think of a Best Picture nominee being a big loser, Selma has clearly underperformed with the industry, earning only two nominations total. The aforementioned Nightcrawler failed to translate its precursor love into Academy love, earning but a lone citation (at least a worthy one, for Dan Gilroy's screenplay, but ouch for Gyllenhaal!).

And what of the one-hit wonders? Films that you weren't expecting to get anything but suddenly pop up in single category thus earning the title "Academy Award nominee". There are a few of them in Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song, including The LEGO Movie which shockingly missed on a Best Animated Feature nomination (that's gotta smart for Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the presumed frontrunners until now).

Some other films did pretty well for themselves despite being outside the Best Picture conversation. Interstellar picked up five nods, including two contentious ones in both sound categories. Foxcatcher picked up five as well, but failed to gain entry to the Best Picture race. Mr. Turner picked up four in the craft categories.

I'll make some more commentaries on the individual categories throughout the morning, but I'll conclude for the moment with a quick list of best nominations and the worst snubs:

-Foxcatcher for director and screenplay...HELL YEAH!
-Captain America for visual effects...HELL YEAH!
-Ida for cinematography...HELL YEAH!
-Both Song of the Sea and Princess Kaguya for animated feature...HELL YEAH!
-Marion Cotillard for actress...HELL YEAH! (No offense to Jen, but I wasn't particularly looking forward to Cake)
-Whiplash for sound mixing...HELL YESSSSSS! Seriously, let's make this one happen.

-Glen Keane snubbed for animated short...HELL NO!
-No Theory of Everything for makeup...HELL NO!
-No Gyllenhaal for actor...HELL NO!
-No Force Majeure for foreign film...HELL NO!
-No Fury for sound...HELL NO!
-No Godzilla for, uh, anything...HELL NO!

[UPDATE:] I've tabulated my overall prediction results, and I correctly anticipated 81 of 106 nominations (I didn't attempt the shorts), identical to my results from last year! So as a tie breaker I decided to look at my early predictions to see how they compared to last year's. I guessed 34 nominees way back in May. Again, identical to last year! Am I plateauing?

Best Picture
American Sniper
Birdman
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash
It's kind of odd that there was enough passion for Selma to sneak in here but that it only received one additional nomination, while Foxcatcher (which I'm delighted to see pop up in five categories!) didn't have enough support to be a ninth nominee. Five of these eight are in my top ten, but the other three don't even come close. I can't help but feel that it's one of those three that will win, but we'll have to wait for the PGA until we can be sure.

'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.

Godzilla Stepped On by VES Snub

I was expecting this announcement to drop tomorrow, but instead we get a third guild announcement of the day. The biggest thing to note with the Visual Effects Society's list of nominees is the absence of Godzilla... in EVERY category. WTF? Is this effects house politics at play, or a larger bias rearing its head? Remember Pacific Rim. Maybe monsters just aren't in vogue.

Barring a shocking Oscar snub, I'd say this is Interstellar's to lose, but I sure do hope the guild spreads the wealth. There was a lot of excellent effects work this year.

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
Maleficent
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Wow. SIX nominees instead of the usual five, and not one of them is Godzilla. The rest of these are on the Oscar shortlist. Maleficent will probably miss, but could I be underestimating X-Men? They've never sprung for that series before. I'd guess Interstellar takes it, but it aught to be Apes.

CAS Nominees include... Interstellar?

The Cinema Audio Society has named their choices for the best sound mixes of the year, and the biggest jaw-dropper is that apparently they heard something in Interstellar that the rest of us couldn't hear (literally, couldn't hear). How can this happen? And from a group of sound mixing professionals, no less!?!

I wonder if, assuming it gets the nominations, it might take both sound categories at the Oscars just because it seems on paper to be that 'type' of movie. Do the right thing, Academy: Actually listen to the films and decide what you think has the best sound.

For instance, a film like, say, Birdman (also nominated by the CAS) is a great example of a movie wherein the clarity of the sound recording and post-production mix does an excellent job of pulling you into the scene.

Two of the other nominees are ones I'm currently predicting for Oscar nods; American Sniper and Unbroken, although I have to think long and hard about the latter's real chances. Rounding out the five is Guardians of the Galaxy, which I wouldn't expect to score anywhere beyond effects and makeup with AMPAS.

The five CAS nominees, again, are:

American Sniper
Birdman
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
Unbroken

The animated contenders after the cut.

CDG Adds to Busy Day of Guild Announcements

The Costume Designers Guild have unveiled their 2014 nominees in three categories, so let's get right into it with the most Oscar-correlative category, Excellence in a Period Film:

Period Film
The Grand Budapest Hotel - Milena Canonero
The Imitation Game - Sammy Sheldon Differ
Inherent Vice - Mark Bridges
Selma - Ruth E. Carter
The Theory of Everything - Steven Noble

I can hear the groaning now, but I'll defend the nomination of Theory of Everything. I liked Noble's simple colour associations with the characters. For the win, however, I'd have a tough time deciding between Grand Budapest and Inherent Vice. The outfits in those two have so much personality!

Will win: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Should win: The Grand Budapest Hotel or Inherent Vice

Two more categories after the cut.

Biblical epics and a fairy tale musical missing from summer-heavy VFX shortlist

The 10 semi-finalists for the Best Visual Effects Oscar have been announced, and most of the usual suspects are present. Of those ten moving on, seven of them are summer blockbusters, every one of them a sequel or reboot (woe to original filmmaking).

Of course, the one wholly original film on the shortlist is probably the most likely to win; That'd be Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.

The most notable omissions are Into the Woods, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and Noah, all three of which seemed like viable spoilers. Well, not anymore.

Review - Interstellar

Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you'll land among the stars. That ancient adage serves to remind us that dreaming big and daring to achieve the impossible is often its own reward, even if it does turn out to be, y'know, impossible. Christopher Nolan sets his sights well beyond our puny moon in Interstellar. He's not even aiming for the same galaxy! So if he launches a misfire, it sure as hell is an intriguing misfire, and probably the most essential science-fiction of the year.

His space opera begins on Earth sometime in the future (Nathan Crowley's weathered production design suggests a future that's distant in technological advancement but aesthetically not unlike our present), when violent dust storms are a routine bother and most of the planet's crops have gone extinct due to blight. There's plenty of corn though, both in the fields and on the page in Nolan's typically creaky expository dialogue.

One of the cultivators of this vital food source, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), bemoans that his education and training as a pilot/engineer are going to waste in a vain attempt to sustain a global population that won't last past his kids' generation. He doesn't merely want his children to survive. He wants them to grow up with the same awe and wonder of the universe that he has.

Early Best Picture Predictions

I've been slower than usual this year at pulling myself out of March's Oscar withdrawal and gearing up for next year's awards, so my apologies to all two of you who have been impatiently itching to see my early predictions. Rest assured they'll be posted on the sidebar by the first of May (my normal deadline for early guesses), but I'll only bother doing a write-up for one category; Best Picture. And here it is: