One Category at a Time: Best Sound Mixing

I feel like every year it gets harder and harder to predict what the Academy as a whole takes into consideration when voting on Best Sound Mixing. Even among the most avid film enthusiasts, the particulars of this craft can be mysterious and confusing. I sometimes struggle myself to decide what constitutes the finest achievement of the year (especially so this year), so trying to speculate as to what others will decide is next to an impossible task.

It brings me no pride to confess that this is the category with my poorest prediction record (roughly 38%), and even the corresponding industry guild -- the CAS, which announces its winners tomorrow -- hasn't matched up all that often: Only 6 of the last 13 CAS champs repeated with the Academy.

But there is one constant that can usually be counted on to pad your Oscar stats: Best Sound Mixing loves musicals.

My Award Nominations: Sound Mixing

Last week I gave the sound designers and editors their due, and today I look at those who best implemented their sounds into the acoustic machinery. As usual, there's often some overlap between my nominees for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing (though not nearly as much overlap as the Academy's), so two movies are double-dipping as the best sounding film of the year for me. Find out which two they are, plus three other terrifically mixed projects after the jump.

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.)

Mourning in the American 'Wild' and the Irish 'Sea': Double Feature Review

Late December is often a time of great celebration. No matter what your faith or customs may be, there's always an extra emphasis on enjoying time with our loved ones this season, as we prepare to close the book on one year and eagerly welcome another.

But, inevitably, the closing out of the year also becomes a time of solemn reflection, to remember what we've lost while cherishing what we still have. 2014 somehow feels like a disproportionately painful year for the filmmaking community; The tragic premature deaths of geniuses like Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman punctuating an already long list of cinema giants who finally left us after significant, fruitful lives.

Perhaps that's why it's been so much on my mind as I've frequented the movies this year. I don't want to be responsible for giving anyone a case of the holiday blues, but it's been impossible for me not to notice a similar thread running through a number of 2014's major releases; A thread about the way people deal with loss, process grief, and ultimately find closure; A thread about how mourning varies from individual to individual, yet is universally human.

A pair of distinctive and radically different films that are currently in limited release, Wild and Song of the Sea, suddenly seem like distant cousins when viewed through this thematic prism.