One Category at a Time: Best Visual Effects

The age-old rule that Best Picture nominees never lose Best Visual Effects to movies not nominated for the Academy's top prize was bucked last year when three effects-driven Best Picture nominees (plus Star Wars) apparently split the vote and allowed the subtle supporting CG of Ex Machina to sneak up the middle for the biggest shocker this category has ever seen. At least that's one theory.

The point is, I don't think I'll be able to trust my own predictions in this category ever again. Even with a stone cold frontrunner in this category, I suppose anything could happen, but let's start by assuming conventional wisdom prevails...

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: Visual Effects

Tomorrow the VES will bestow a bunch of hardware on The Jungle Book (or so I presume), but there was a ton of other impressive work done out there worthy of Best Visual Effects consideration. And I have to hand it to the Academy's vfx branch too: This year, they got it exactly right.
Here are my top five:

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: Sound Editing

Truth be told, there was only one film I saw (that is, heard) this year whose sound design is so embedded into the identity of the movie that it instantly became my defacto winner. That said, there were still plenty of other impressive aural accomplishments, so for now I'll let you guess which of these five Best Sound Editing showcases will take my esteemed prize:

Thoughts on 'Lion' and Others [Updating...]

Within minutes of this posting the Critics' Choice Awards will start, the first televised awards show of the season. But since it's happening a month earlier than it normally does, it will hardly count as the most significant awards news of the upcoming week. Tomorrow will see the unveiling of the Golden Globe nominations, followed by SAG nominations on Wednesday.

As all this happens, more contenders begin creeping out of their limited release hidey holes. I caught up with one such contender this afternoon, The Weinstein Co.'s big hopeful Lion, which hasn't been that healthily represented in first half-dozen-or-so critics awards, but the Academy will rectify that.
The movie is pretty great.