One Category at a Time: Sound Editing

As it is in Best Sound Mixing, the competition for the Best Sound Editing trophy seems to be pretty well sewn up. Even though a 4/5 overlap with the former category makes a separate analysis of the latter somewhat redundant, let's take a look at the nominees anyhow. After all, last year saw the first time ever that the two sound awards were split between three films, so clearly the Academy doesn't always lump the two together -- often, but not always.

My Award nominations: Makeup and Hair

Whatever the makeup branch of the Academy is doing, it has to stop. I know some people really adore how this branch constantly goes out of its way to honour outright terrible films that happen to have elaborate makeup work, but two years in a row now it has come at the expense of the actual best makeup jobs of the year. Last year it was the invisibly convincing period makeup of Lincoln that gave way to the obvious (and hardly buyable) prosthetics of Hitchcock on nomination morning. This year was even worse, as the best work of the year failed to even make the bakeoff! So now we have Academy Awards nominees Bad Grandpa and The Lone Ranger, which I wouldn't mind so much if their old age makeup didn't look so rubbery and fake.

Anyway, rant over. Here is the true Best Makeup and Hair of 2013:

My Award nominations: Sound Editing

Last year my nominees for Best Sound Editing were five completely different films than my nominees for Best Sound Mixing, but as much as I do wish I could similarly spread the wealth this year, there were a couple of films whose sound elements simply could not be denied recognition in both categories.

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...

Motion Picture Sound Editors nominate

The final guild to drop its list of year-end nominees -- on the eve of Oscar nominations no less -- is the MPSE.

The most important category, Best Sound Effects and Foley, includes Oscar hopefuls Gravity, Captain Phillips, Lone Survivor, and All Is Lost, among others.

The only conspicuous omission is Rush, and I gotta say, I don't understand the industry's resistance to this movie. Sure, I didn't love it, but there's a lot of craftsmanship to appreciate. The fact that it's also been shut out by the CAS, the Makeup and Hairstylists Guild, and the ASC in a field of seven nominees...
Way. Harsh.

Anyway, check out all the categories and my thoughts after the cut.

Writers Guild nominations

Hot on the heals of yesterday's PGA announcement, the WGA has chimed in with their selections for the year's best screenplays... at least those that were eligible. It rankles every year that a number of the most highly touted films of the year are not qualified for the guild's honour, and this year's list of ineligibilities include likely Oscar nominees 12 Years a Slave and Philomena, among others.

Full list of nominees (and comments) after the cut.

Capsule reviews for the first day of winter

Up here in the icy GTA (which felt not unlike the glacial Arendelle of Frozen this past week) it's easy for me to forget that winter hasn't officially hit us until today. Perhaps that because I so closely associate winter with the Oscar season, which lasts much longer than a mere three months. For me, that means a glut of November/December prestige titles to catch up on; more than I can possibly write full reviews for. So here are some 1-2 sentence reactions to various films I've taken in so far. I may add more as I see them.