Busy Guild Weekend: WGA, CAS, MPSE, MAHS

We're into the final stretch, and this long weekend saw a smattering of the remaining guilds announce their winners for the year (only the CDG is left).

The most contested of them would have to be the Writers Guild of America Awards, where the three presumed Best Picture heavyweights Moonlight, La La Land and Manchester by the Sea all squared off against each other for Best Original Screenplay. Moonlight won that distinction, giving me just a bit more comfort in sticking with it for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, although this gives us no further hints in the nail-biter between La La Land and Manchester for the Original Screenplay prize.

With both Moonlight and Lion absent from the guild's Best Adapted Screenplay category, Arrival was able to capitalize. What a wonderful surprise it would be if it could translate its Critics Choice and WGA cache into Oscar gold!

The prize for Documentary Screenplay went to Robert Kenner's Command and Control, which had been shortlisted for the Oscar but failed to make the final five.

One Category at a Time: Best Sound Editing

Earlier today I outlined my thoughts on the race for Best Sound Mixing, and now I'm doing the same for its sister category Best Sound Editing. I did consider covering both predictions in a single post, but it occurred to me that this may be one of those rare years in which we see a split between the two sound categories.

What could make it an even rarer occurrence is that the split might be between two films nominated in both contests, which as only ever happened once (between Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight). The reason such wealth-sharing is so uncommon is that the Academy often struggles to differentiate these two aural disciplines, unless they receive some sort of "obvious" and oversimplified direction, like 'musicals = sound mixing' and 'action = sound editing'.

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:

Oscar Telecast Retrospective Part 2: Mad Max's Golden Hour

With Rock laying waste to the elephant in the room through that biting monologue, it was time to get on with the show...

The Huntsman sisters, beautiful bad-asses Emily Blunt and Charlize Theron, flirt with writers everywhere while introducing Best Original Screenplay, which went to Spotlight's Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (not “John”, Charlize!).

The victory was not only richly deserved, but also immediately exposed the Thank-You Ticker for the disastrous experiment that it was, as Singer began his speech by repeating “We've gotta thank...” four times over with numerous names in between.

MPSE tie keeps Sound Editing Oscar race tight

As though it weren't already tough enough to predict the sound categories for tonight, the Motion Picture Sound Editors went and split their top honour (Feature FX/Foley) between the two presumed Oscar frontrunners for Best Sound Editing; The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road. I think this very neatly epitomizes just how closely the craft categories are going to be contested between these two movies, whether in the sound categories or design categories or editing or cinematography or effects. It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out 10 hours from now.

In other (happy) news, Love & Mercy, Inside Out and Son of Saul also received Golden Reel Awards last night for their terrific sound work, even though Oscar sadly didn't take notice. Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Bridge of Spies took one apiece as well. Lots of wealth spread by the MPSE.

Best Sound Editing: Feature English Language – FX/Foley (TIE)
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD & THE REVENANT

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 (x2): Sound Mixing+Editing

It seems like every year I end up saying something along the lines of, "the sound categories are especially tough this year". In truth, they're just hard every year. Which precursor do you believe in? Do you double down on one movie winning both (usually the case), or do you hedge your bets by predicting a split? Will it even be the right split?

I twist myself into a pretzel every year running over the permutations, so this year I'm gonna do myself a favour and just get Sound Mixing and Sound Editing over with quickly in one brief post. Like ripping off a band-aid.

Early Oscar Predictions: Sound

Music and sound are amongst the final touches to be put on a film, which means there's usually not much to go on when trying to predict Oscar nominees from a year out. Actioners, war movies, or films of a grand size and scale are as good a bet as any at this stage. Better yet if their crews feature sound designers and mixers you have had brushes with awards success in the past.

Top Five Highlights of 2014-15 Oscar Season

Yesterday I unloaded most irksome bugaboos of the 2014-15 awards season in a flurry of list-ified rage. Venting is healthy, right? But if there's one thing healthier, it's accentuating the positive. So as my final word (I swear!) on the Oscar derby that ended almost a week ago, here are my five favourite treasures of the season:

'Birdman' and 'Sniper' Both Win MPSE Awards

The Motion Picture Sound Editors spread the wealth at last night's Golden Reel Awards, bestowing trophies upon the Oscar-nominated sound editing teams of Birdman, American Sniper, Unbroken, among others not cited by the Academy's sound branch; Big Hero 6, Get On Up, The Liberator, and Warsaw Uprising.

American Sniper's victory came on its sole nomination, Best Sound Effects and Foley, commonly seen as the closest descriptor of the Oscar for sound editing.

I'm starting to smell a bit of a Hugo-v.-War-Horse situation brewing in the sound categories...

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.

My Award Nominations: Best Sound Editing

For today's entry on my ballot, we're lending an ear to the best sound jobs of 2014. Herewith are my nominees for Best Sound Editing, which will be followed later today by my sound mixing favourites. I usually try to minimize overlap between the two categories, although there are always a couple of titles that deserve recognition in both. You'll just have to guess which of these five will double dip!

'Birdman' and 'Apes' Lead MPSE Nods

On the eve of Oscar morning, the Motion Picture Sound Editors announced their nominees for the year's best achievements in sound design and editing. Birdman and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes lead all contenders with three nods apiece, and both are fine honourees for their excellent sound jobs (although I may be more impressed with Birdman's overall mix than with the editorial).

The most Oscar-indicative category is Best Sound Effects/Foley, which also features Oscar hopefuls Unbroken, Interstellar, Fury, and American Sniper, joined by a pair of Marvel blockbusters in Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Best Sound Effects/Foley
American Sniper
Birdman
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Fury
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
Unbroken
I expect the Oscar five will be a permutation of these eight, but which three drop out? Despite its impressive showing here, I'm just not sure the Apes franchise is embraced as warmly by the Academy as it aught to be. I also don't expect either of the Marvel efforts, but I could certainly be wrong. Fury deserves to be the winner, but Best Picture clout may aid American Sniper in this race.

Review - Fury

It is April, 1945. The second world war draws to an agonizingly bloody close on German soil. Materializing out of a haze of sunlight and gun smoke, a German officer atop a weathered white horse trudges through a scorched battlefield, floating in silence like a ghost amongst the dead bodies and burning debris. There's a sad beauty to this image that greets us at the onset of Fury, steeped in an eerie serenity that the film's title does not suggest.

Naturally, this moment ends in an abrupt and brutal fashion more typical to the rest of this rockem' sockem' war story. Written and directed by David Ayer, many of whose previous films and screenplays (End of Watch, Harsh Times, Training Day) have been gritty studies in rock-hard masculinity, Fury follows the perilous travails of a tank unit as it pushes the Allied advance deeper into enemy territory in the dying days of WWII.

Brad Pitt headlines as Sgt. Don 'Wardaddy' Collier, commander of a 30-ton M4 Sherman tank (the eponymous Fury, whose moniker is scrawled across the cannon barrel as if the bow of a ship) and its testosterone-oozing crew. This includes Shia LaBeouf as its devout trigger man, Michael Peña as its empathetic driver, and Jon Bernthal as its certifiable mechanic. No, not “certified”, “certifiable”.

Review - How to Train Your Dragon 2

It's usually hard to get excited about the film franchises of DreamWorks Animation. In order to cling to the pop culture zeitgeist on which so many of them depend, the studio churns out sequels and spinoffs with a rapidity and middling quality that might be better suited to television! One could therefore be forgiven for being pessimistic on the prospects of a sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, a critically acclaimed box office hit that spun the quaint morality tale of how an oddball viking named Hiccup (Jay Burachel) managed to capture and bond with the most unlikely of pets: a wild dragon he named Toothless.

I quite enjoyed that film when it was released back in 2010, and my affection for it has only grown since then. Obviously, my hopes weren't too high for its inevitable follow-up, but this is one sequel for which DreamWorks deserved the benefit of the doubt. How to Train Your Dragon 2 truly delivers, and with fiery confidence to boot. Not only is it the studio's most thrilling adventure to date, but also its most thematically robust and elegantly handled as well.

The story picks up five years after the events of the first Dragon, in which time the once dragon-fearing highland village of Berk has become a more harmonious place where Vikings and dragons happily coexist. Hiccup's father Stoick (Gerard Butler) is intent on preparing his son to eventually succeed him as clan chieftain, but the soul-searching Hiccup naturally has his doubts. He'd rather devote his time to flying around on Toothless, mapping out new lands, outfitted with a tricked-out steampunk wing-suit that allows him to literally glide alongside his winged companion.

Last minute question marks and wishlist

Ballots have been in for two days now, and there's nothing left to do but wait for the final results to be unveiled on Sunday night. Most pundits have settled on their predictions after weeks of deliberation, but for me, these dwindling days are often when my initially settled predictions suddenly become unsettled! There are some huge question marks that'll have me waffling on this category or that from now until their envelopes are opened. Here are some lingering uncertainties I have heading into the big show, accompanied by a small wishlist that would be oh so satisfying to see happen:

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.

MPSE honours Gravity, Captain Phillips

The Motion Picture Sound Editors spread the wealth last night, handing no more than one award to any film in contention, but the main prize of Best Sound Effects and Foley (which correlates most closely to the Academy's Sound Editing award) went to Gravity. Captain Phillips picked up a win as well for its ADR, but none of the other prize winners are up for the Oscar. Read the list after the cut.

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.

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.