My Award Nominations: Sound Editing

Only a little more than a week before the big night. Over the next three days I'll be polishing off my personal nominations, leading up to the unveiling of my top 20 list starting on Tuesday.

For today, I'm tackling the sound categories, beginning with Sound Editing:

One Category at a Time: Makeup and Hairstyling

Usually, Best Makeup and Hairstyling can be a frustrating and unpredictable category at the nomination stage. Despite having the field of possible nominees pared down to a paltry seven in advance, many pundits fail to anticipate the final three nominees since this branch has a bit of a history of snubbing excellent makeup in excellent films in favour of commendable makeup in horrible films -- much to the vexation of Oscar completists everywhere, who hate having to sit through the likes of Click, Norbit, or The Lone Ranger.

Picking the winners, however, has usually been relatively easy. How can it not be, with only three options to consider (time to expand it to five, AMPAS!). I myself have guessed the winners correctly for eight consecutive years, a longer streak than I can boast in any other category, and I'm far from the only one with such a record. This is all very usual for Oscar prognosticators.

But this year, things are a bit unusual. In fact, they're downright topsy turvy. Not only are all three movies worthy contenders for their remarkable transformations, but all three movies are actually... good movies! And more unusual yet is that all three of them feel like potential winners, making this one of the true toss-up categories of the year.

Let's dive into the cases you could make for each nominee:

My Award Nominations: Best Makeup and Hair

For as long as I've been compiling my own personal Oscar ballots (feels like I've been at it since infancy), I've stubbornly limited myself to three nominees for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. I suppose it grew out of mimicking the Academy at first, but now it doesn't seem to make sense that it's the only category with such a restrictive number of contestants. If you ever read Nate Rogers at The Film Experience -- which of course you do, because what Oscar-loving film buff doesn't? -- you know what I'm talking about. For years he's made very a logical argument for why the makeup branch should finally get with the times and expand its field to five nominees.

So I'm taking a page out of that book and expanding my own field to reflect the rest of my awards -- five per category. Maybe if I'm bored one day, I'll even go back in time and retroactively add a couple of deserving hair+makeup efforts to my nominees from years past (though the boredom would have to be tremendous). But for now, peruse the best of what 2014 had to offer:

Review - Guardians of the Galaxy

I know I'm super late to the space launch on this one, but it's not as though the Guardians of the Galaxy are going anywhere anytime soon. Having rocketed to the top of the domestic box office (and still climbing) in just one month of release, there's no arguing that Marvel Studios has yet another bona fide hit on their hands, but does the product really befit the hype?

Even if not, one can only congratulate Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige and director James Gunn (Slither) on their success. Unlike the reliably profitable Avengers universe that oils their movie-making machinery, Guardians of the Galaxy was a more commercially risky project, mining the farthest reaches of space for characters that would have anyone but comic book buffs scratching their heads.

My Awards nominations: Hair and Makeup

In this digital age it always does me good to see that this dying art is still kicking its legs. The best Hair and Makeup achievements of the year are:

Captain America: The First Avenger
(David White, Lisa Westcott):

Redskull is a creepy and iconic creation, but let's not forget all the detailing that goes into those WWII battle scars and period hairdos.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows 2
(Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight, Lisa Tomblin):

Okay, so not everybody was convinced by the epilogue aging, but that doesn't diminish the quality and quantity of the other fantastical character designs.

Green Lantern (Joel Harlow, Felicity Bowring):

Wonderful alien creations and Peter Saarsgard's pronounced forehead are appropriately cartoonish but also convincingly done.

The Iron Lady (Mark Coulier, Marese Langan):

Nuanced aging work takes us through Thatcher's glory days to her desiccated "golden years" with tangible authenticity.

Thor (Luisa Abel, Janice Alexander):

The frost giants are particularly elaborate designs, but let's not forget all that robust Asgaardian facial hair.

Just missed: Captain America, Harry Potter 8, Hugo, War Horse

One Category at a Time: Best Makeup

It's hard to tell what direction this branch will go on a yearly basis. They really do nominate what they feel constitutes the best work, and pay little attention to critical reception or Best Picture buzz. And to be honest, that's the way it aught to be. So who stands a chance of getting in this year?

Given their openness to nominating films that the critics really don't give a damn about, I haven't got a problem in predicting a film like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - one which I doubt will fare too well with cinephiles - to earn a nod. Two of the previous three Pirates films made it in here, and with past winners Joel Harlow and Peter King on board, I imagine the makeup work will be great.

A call I'm less confident in but still willing to make is A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg's look at the lives and work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The film's makeup and hair designer Stephan Dupuis already has an Oscar to his name, albeit for his more grotesque transformative magic on Cronenberg's The Fly. Can he follow up his sole nomination from 25 years ago with another one for what we can only assume will be more subtle work?

And what about all those comic-book-character-based blockbusters coming out this summer? Surely they can't all be passed over by the Academy. Captain America's WWII setting may allow Lisa Westcott and David White to cook up some realistic war-related makeup to compliment what will probably be their more memorable creation; Hugo Weaving's transformation into Red Skull.

Predicted three:
Captain America: The First Avenger
A Dangerous Method
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Also consider: Cowboys and Aliens, The Green Lantern, Harry Potter 7, The Iron Lady, Thor, War Horse.