I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories,
tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from
who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean
I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.
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Previously:
Glossary:
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television
Arts Awards
CAS - Cinema Audio Society Awards
Golden Reel - Motion Picture Sound Editors Award
The Sound Editing and Sound Mixing Oscars come down
to how hard the Academy voters want to try. Half of the last 20 years, they’ve
given the two awards to the same movie. Another possible strategy is “bullets
and Broadway”: give Sound Editing to the war movie and Sound Mixing to the
musical. Depending on how you define it, that has happened 4 of the last 20
years. The other 6 years were bedlam.
The precursor awards can be useful but they aren’t
binding. The CAS Sound Mixing award winner also won the Oscar 10/20 years. It
has nominated the Oscar winner 19/20 times; the one exception when they failed
to nominate Whiplash for 2014. I’ll
call that a fluke.
The Golden Reels, handed out by the Sound Editors’
Guild, splits their awards up. The Oscar winner for Sound Editing has won at
least one of the Golden Reel awards 14 of the last 20 years and had one or more
nominations all 20 years.
The BAFTA Awards combine Sound Editing and Mixing
into a single Sound award. It’s slightly more accurate calling the Sound Mixing
award (13/20) than the Sound Editing award (10/20).
All this leaves a lot of decisions for me to
make.
Sound Mixing
BAFTA - Sound - Winner
CAS - Sound Mixing –
Winner
Look, Bohemian
Rhapsody made $800 million worldwide for being a musical travelogue of Queen’s
discography and carried that to a significant amount of awards love. This is
exactly where you award a movie like that. Unless this is one of those years
when the Academy decides that no one puts Baby in a corner, this is the most
logical award of the night.
BAFTA - Sound -
Nominee
CAS - Sound Mixing -
Nominee
There is a lingering
theory that the Academy apologizes for not giving First Man more love (seriously, no Original Score nomination?!) by
giving it some much deserved technical award love. This feels more like a Sound
Editing win than Sound Mixing, but so did Hacksaw
Ridge two years ago. Seriously, the voters lose their damn minds a lot.
BAFTA - Sound -
Nominee
CAS - Sound Mixing –
Nominee
If voters think of Sound Mixing as “best musical
performance”, then watch the “Shallow” scene and tell me how this loses? Alas,
I think the star is falling for this one.
I suppose it could run away with all the awards.
CAS - Sound Mixing –
Nominee
Even the prognosticators who are looking for how
voters could sneak in a Black Panther
win forget about the sound awards as a possibility.
Sound Editing
Bohemian Rhapsody
BAFTA - Sound -
Winner
Golden Reel -
Dialogue/ADR - Winner
Golden Reel – Feature
Musical – Winner
This feels like a lazy voter year. I could hedge
and split my picks between the sound awards to increase my chances of getting one
right, but I’m feeling bold. And, I mean, this did win all the Sound Editing
awards it was nominated for. It’s going to come down to “Queen is music; music has
sound; give Queen the sound award”.
BAFTA - Sound -
Nominee
Golden Reel -
Dialogue/ADR - Nominee
Golden Reel -
Effects/Foley - Winner
Golden Reel - Music
- Nominee
Voters like when they
don’t have to notice the subtleties of a category. There’s nothing subtle about
the Sound Editing of A Quiet Place. If
something is getting in the way of a Bohemian
Rhapsody rubber stamp, it’s the obviousness of A Quiet Place*.
*Note: I do think A Quiet Place
has excellent Sound Editing – as well as I understand it – but I don’t really
look at quality as a factor for picking Oscar winners.
First Man
BAFTA - Sound -
Nominee
Golden Reel -
Dialogue/ADR - Nominee
Golden Reel -
Effects/Foley - Nominee
Golden Reel - Music
- Nominee
Similar logic to Sound
Mixing. Quiet support could lead to a win here.
Black Panther
Golden Reel -
Effects/Foley - Nominee
Golden Reel - Music
- Nominee
Of the two sound awards, this is the one a superhero
movie is more likely to win. That said, the only comic book movie I could find
that won this in the last couple decades was The Dark Knight.
Roma
Golden Reel -
Dialogue/ADR - Nominee
Golden Reel -
Effects/Foley - Nominee
Golden Reel - Music
- Nominee
Currently, the most subdued movie to win the
Sound Editing Oscar in the last two decades is, I guess, Hugo. This is not an award that goes to a movie like Roma.
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