My Award nominations: Sound Editing

Great work out there from the sound designers this year. I tell ya, some decisions were tough to make in narrowing it down to five for my Best Sound Editing nominees.

My Award nominations: Original Score

Only one of my own Best Original Score nominees went on to be nominated for the Oscar, but that doesn't undercut what a diverse year it's been for film music. The other four that found room on the Academy's slate are quite terrific, even if they didn't find room on mine:

IFMCA nominees

Composers in Hollywood don't have a guild or trade group to give us hints as to Oscar potential like other craft sectors, but each year we get to see what the International Film Music Critics Association thinks represents the best of the year, and it's always a treat! The organization drops their nominees well after Oscar nominations, and with a plethora of categories, they often spotlight artists that the Academy's insular branch overlooks, like TRON Legacy's Daft Punk two years ago or Drive's Cliff Martinez last year.

This year's nominees include wonderful but sadly Oscar-snubbed scores like Cloud Atlas, Rise of the Guardians, The Dark Knight Rises, and others. The biggest presence on this slate is enjoyed by Alexandre Desplat, with four nominations including Composer of the Year (he's gotta win that one, right?).

Film Score of the Year
Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil)
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Howard Shore)
The Impossible (Fernando Velázquez)
Life of Pi (Mychael Danna)
Lincoln (John Williams)

I'm guessing this comes down to the two Oscar nominees, Lincoln and Life of Pi. They gave it to Williams last year, and it looks like Mychael Danna is on route to Oscar, so it might be his to lose.

Life of Pi and Brave clean up at VES Awards

The Visual Effects Society came through for Life of Pi (like we knew they would), handing it four honours including the Best Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Motion Picture. The Avengers and The Hobbit were consoled with two wins and one win respectively.

In the animated categories, Brave swept the board, winning all four prizes for effects in animated films. It's a beautiful film with great effects and all, but I gotta say:

ParaNorman = robbed.

Just saying.

All the winners after the jump.

My Award nominees for 2012 year in film

Here they are for your perusal. Beasts of the Southern Wild leads with eight nominations, but Amour is close behind with seven. Moonrise Kingdom and Lincoln follow with six apiece, and my fifth Best Picture nominee, Argo, is joined by The Master and The Dark Knight Rises with five apiece. Winners go up tomorrow night.

My Awards nominations: Costume Design

My nominees for Costume Design after the cut:

My Award nominations: Supporting Actress

The field hasn't been as competitive as it has in past years, but I'm still quite satisfied with the five (well, four actually) actresses I settled on. My picks for Best Supporting Actress after the cut.

Oscar Nominations! ZOMG!

First and foremost, here's the link: http://oscar.go.com/nominees (it's just easier than writing 'em all down).

Second, and more substantially, here are my reactions:

WHOA!WOW!HOLYSHIT!IDON'TBELIEVEIT!AREYOUKIDDINGME!

In a phase 1 as condensed and crazy as this, we could be forgiven for hoping the Academy would throw us a few surprises, and they certainly didn't disappoint. Best Picture was stuffed, boasting nine nominees. Seven of them I anticipated -- Argo, Django, Les Mis, Life of Pi, Lincoln, SLP, and ZDT -- but the two I didn't predict have made me a very happy man; Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour (along with the aforementioned Argo), represent the three best movies of the year in my opinion, and it's a thrill to see all of them up for the big prize. And I thought I wouldn't have any movies to root for!

Visual Effects Society noms

The VES has revealed their nominations for the 2012 year in film, and leading the way with seven nods is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, followed closely by Life of Pi and The Avengers with six. All are presumed Oscar nominees, but guessing those final two slots gets a bit tricky.

The Dark Knight Rises has been an assumed nominee all year, but only scooped one mention from the guild; for its great miniatures. Another superhero film to reap a sole nomination is The Amazing Spider-Man, which few are anticipating will earn Academy love anyway. I'm beginning to come around to the thought of Prometheus -- which garnered three nods -- taking that fifth slot. Its effects work was pretty terrific, and three of the Alien films earned Oscar nominations for visual effects.

The four other films shortlisted by the Academy were snubbed altogether. Skyfall's shutout here might be attributed to its abundance of practical effects, but could ride a wave of momentum through the craft categories to a surprise effects nomination on Thursday. Cloud Atlas' Oscar chances are all but dead in the water after being largely written off as a confusing flop. Ditto John Carter. Snow White and the Huntsman might be a dark horse to watch.

On the animated side of things, I'm delighted to see ParaNorman do so well with five nominations. For those of you who've been asking about my own awards, I may as well mention right now that its effects are among the most impressive of the year in my opinion.

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture
"The Avengers"
"Battleship"
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"
"Life of Pi" The current frontrunner, and likely Oscar winner
"Prometheus"

Review - The Dark Knight Rises

Batman faces his greatest challenge yet in The Dark Knight Rises, in which Gotham city is threatened by potential nuclear Armageddon at the whim of a coldly calculatory and brawny terrorist, forcing the reclusive billionaire to dust off his batsuit after eight years out of the saddle. How to move on from the emotional and physical scars incurred from that fateful clash with The Joker and Two-Face, unaware of the even greater emotional and physical hurdles to come? As it proves the greatest challenge yet for Batman, so too does The Dark Knight Rises prove the greatest challenge yet for the trilogy's writer-director-producer Christopher Nolan. How to follow up the unprecedented commercial and critical success of his 2008 hit The Dark Knight with a third and final chapter that can satisfy geeks, general audiences, and critics alike? Well, he may have stumbled across that finish line somewhat, but cross it he has, giving his franchise the epic and stirring conclusion it deserves.

Compositing numerous character arcs and plot threads with which Batman aficionados will already be familiar, The Dark Knight Rises takes off with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) been shaken from vigilante retirement upon the appearance of a new villain in town; the mask-wearing international master criminal Bane (Tom Hardy) who enacts an ambiguous plot which Wayne's concerned butler Alfred (Michael Caine) suggests might be connected to foes from Batman's past. It doesn't help matters that the Caped Crusader's list of allies is as flimsy as his injured right leg. The city wrongfully holds him responsible for the death of Harvey Dent eight years earlier, but he still has friends in GCPD Commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), a young cop named John Blake (Joseph Gordon Levitt), and wealthy socialite Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) whose investment in Wayne's company have yielded a clean energy source which could be weaponized if allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Also along for the ride is anti-heroine Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a slick cat burglar whose allegiances are in question and flux as she tries to steal and slink her way out of an increasingly dangerous Gotham.