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.

Christmas Capsules (Reviews)

Things are probably going to get a bit quiet on this blog (and other award news outlets) over the next couple of weeks. All the Academy shortlists have been unveiled for applicable categories, top ten lists from most critics have been published, and at this point there's not much left to do but wait for the guilds to start piping up in the New Year.

Me, I'll be catching up with all sorts of early releases from this year as well as new ones as they open up in their plush holiday time slots. As I do, I'll keep adding my brief capsule reactions to this space, which you can check up on from time to time (I'll make an effort to tweet new entries). Consider it my Non-Denominational Mid-December Holiday Special to you, whose readership I appreciate all year round!

So have a merry Christmas, a happy Chanukah, a kwazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn yet dignified Ramadan.

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.

VES winners

I completely forgot that the Visual Effects Society awards were being handed out last night, but can you blame me? This Oscar category is so locked down that it's hard to drum up much interest in it. Yes, Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity was the big winner of the night, claiming prizes in all but one of the individual categories in which it was nominated for a total of six. The one film that was able to defeat it: The Hobbit for Best Animated Character. Hard to dispute that one, and honestly, I wish there was a little more of that wealth spreading going on. Gravity may have the Academy Award sewn up but there were lots of other brilliant fx jobs this year that deserved recognition.

The sweep effect also factored into the Feature Animation races as Frozen won all four of those categories. That isn't so uncommon. For four consecutive years now it's been one toon winning all of the prizes for effects in animated films (How to Train Your Dragon, Rango, Brave, and now Frozen), which is really a shame, as it can't help but reflect a certain laziness in membership voting.

Check out the full list of motion picture winners below.

IFMCA nominees

A few days ago the International Film Music Critics Association very quietly announced their nominees for 2013 (I don't know if they even issued a press release, as I haven't seen the news published anywhere but their official website). Since composers don't have a guild or trade society of their own, this is the closest we get to a precursor award just for movie music, but it doesn't always align with the Academy's taste.

This year, for instance, the top category of 'Film Score of the Year' is a real head-scratcher, featuring only one of the five Oscar nominees (probable winner Stephen Price for Gravity). Rounding it out is Howard Shore's swollen Hobbit score and three other soundtracks that I doubt were on anyone's award radar!

It looks like this might be Price's to lose, but he isn't the composer with the most nominations from this group. That distinction goes to Abel Korzeniowski, who has multiple scores recognized.

Check out the eclectic group of nominees after the cut.

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...

One Category at a Time: Visual Effects

I'll try to keep this post short and sweet, because let's face it: There's no bigger slam dunk this year than Gravity's impending victory for the Best Visual Effects Oscar. This is hardly arguable, even for detractors of the film. But as locked up as the award is, there are still a few tidbits of trivia worth mentioning...

My Award nominations: Visual Effects

Let's be honest: For just about everybody, this year's visual effects contest has basically consisted of one movie, and then everything else. But that doesn't mean that the pretenders shouldn't be acknowledged for their stellar work.

So read about the best Visual Effects work of the year (plus the other four) after the jump.

Visual Effects Society nominations

Gravity predictably dominated today's nominations by the VES, picking up a field-leading eight nods. Pacific Rim came in second with six, while The Hobbit and Iron Man are third with five. It ultimately doesn't matter, as we know who's taking Oscar in a spacewalk, but I do hope the VES sees fit to throw the odd bone to a few of those also-rans. They looked mighty good too.

Nominees and my commentaries after the cut.

Review - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Peter Jackson's overdrawn saga of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit continues in the ongoing trilogy's second episode, subtitled The Desolation of Smaug, which as it turns out, is not about bringing an end to air pollution in Middle Earth (I shudder imagine the size of Mt. Doom's carbon footprint). Smaug, of course, is the vain and ferocious dragon (voiced and mo-capped here by Benedict Cumberbatch) who has hoarded generations worth of stolen dwarf gold in the stony mountain keep of Erebor; the ancient kingdom which you'll recall young Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and our intrepid band of heroes set out on an unexpected journey to recapture in last year's first installment.

The stakes heighten in this chapter, as Bilbo & Co., now well beyond the point of no return, draw ever closer to the villainous fire-breathing reptile, encountering all manner of other threats along the way. These include the usual orcs and wargs, but also a bearlike skin-changer, giant spiders (been there, done that), a menacing Necromancer, and suspicious wood elves among whom we meet Lord of the Rings mainstay Legolas. Shrewdly added to the proceedings after the first film was mildly criticized for its lopsided lack of female characters – Tolkien's fault, not the filmmakers' – is the elfin warrior Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), an original creation of Jackson and his writing team intended to shoot a much-needed strong woman's presence into the testosterone-heavy cast. Unfortunately, she is eventually relegated to being the fulcrum of a silly romantic subplot.

Makeup bake-off replete, as always, with baffling omissions

I don't know why I even bother predicting Best Makeup nominees before the list of finalists is unveiled. Every year there's at least one (or two, or in this case three of my presumed nominees) that fail to advance past the bake-off stage.

The unforgivable omissions this year are Rush and The Hobbit. The former not only applied squeamishly effective burn prosthetics to star Daniel Bruhl, but also featured tons of striking period hairstyles. In the case of the latter, I suppose it's possible that the makeup branch didn't deem there to be enough new makeup after last year's nominated effort already introduced us to all those dwarfs, but this one did boast many new characters designs from orcs to elves to skin-changers and involved a shitload of grime/dirt/weathering effects.

Confusing. Just... so confusing.

Early Oscar predictions - Part 5

Today's post is a short one, just looking at some of the possibilities in Production Design, Costume Design, and Makeup & Hairstyling. Next week we'll finish up the early predictions with a look at the aural craft categories.

One Category at a Time: Makeup and Hairstyling

Like it was this time last year, I find myself running around in illogical circles trying to determine the winner of this year's Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Do I go with the most liked film, the coolly received but star-transforming biopic, or the fantasy with the “most” makeup?

One Category at a Time: Production Design

Production design is one of those fields in which the Academy almost always votes for “most” over “best”, even if it's at the expense of a film they clearly like more. The sets need to draw attention to themselves in order to take the gold here, and for my money, there's only one nominee in this group that looks like a winner, although it's far from a slam dunk:

One Category at a Time: Visual Effects

One thing that last year's race for Best Visual Effects made clear was that you just can't beat a Best Picture nominee in this category, even if its effects are far inferior to another contender. But this year, the category's only Best Picture nominee just so happens to legitimately have the best effects of the year, making this one of the night's surest locks.

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 nominations: Original Song

Most years I find that I have to grasp at straws a bit in order to find five songs I like enough to justify nominating for Best Original Song. I've only got three down at the moment, but I may flesh it out before announcing my award winners:

UPDATE: So yeah, caught up with Ted recently, and very much dug the song. Nice catch by the Academy's music branch.

My Award nominations: Makeup and Hair

This is the only category this year in which none of my own nominees are up for the Oscar. Shame, shame, Makeup branch. Don't you understand that these three movies have the Best Makeup and Hair of the year?

Motion Picture Sound Editors nominate

The final guild to announce its nominees is the MPSE, and leading the way with three nods apiece are Best Sound Editing Oscar nominees Argo, Life of Pi, and Skyfall, joined by The Hobbit. Django Unchained has two, while the fifth Oscar nominee, Zero Dark Thirty (whose sound design is excellent), was shut out completely. Guess they didn't see it in time?

This category is tricky for me every year, but this year in particular because the supposed Sound Mixing frontrunner, Les Mis, is not up for Sound Editing. Who takes it then? I'm thinking Life of Pi, but then wouldn't it take Sound Mixing away from Les Mis as well? Or will we see our first split in these categories since Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight shared them in 2009?

Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects and Foley in a Feature Film

Argo

The Avengers

The Dark Knight Rises

Django Unchained

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Life of Pi

Prometheus

Skyfall

Disappointing that Zero Dark Thirty is not here. At any rate, the guild love for Argo suggests that it is indeed still a force to be reckoned with at the Oscars, Director nod or no Director nod. I'd say Django Unchained is the best of this lot, but I'm guessing it'll go to Life of Pi.

Cinema Audio Society noms

The guild announcements continue as the CAS has dropped their five (*actually ten) best mixed films of the year. I had only recently removed The Hobbit from my own predictions, but its inclusion here forces me to re-reconsider. All three LOTR films got Best Sound Mixing nominations after all. Presumed nominees Les Mis and Skyfall (the former the likely winner) were also mentioned, while Best Picture heavyweights Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty round out the top five.

The biggest surprise for me is the society's decision to inaugurate a separate category for animated films -- further suppression of this increasingly ghettoized medium. I'd have thought that if there's any field in which animated films could, and should, be judged on an equal playing field with live-action, it's sound!

Anyway, the nominees, and some final pontifications, after the cut.