by Red of Anomalous Material
One of the more surprising things about this year's nomination list for Best Sound Editing is the number of films that fail to match up with the Sound Mixing category. It is pretty typical to see four or five films receive a nomination in both fields, as most voters tend to believe that the two go hand in hand. This year, however, a whopping two movies managed this feat, with those films being "Inception" and "True Grit".
This is the first time that we've seen less than four identical nominations since Sound Editing expanded to five nominations in 2006. It's also the first time we've seen only two identical nominations since 2003, when "Finding Nemo" was nominated in a class of three for Editing, but failed to make the final five for sound Mixing. For all of you trivia wizards out there, the last time that no nominations matched up? 1996.
Sound editing, simply enough, is the capturing and production of noises and sound, whether they are recorded or synthetic. Obviously big action movies tend to do well in this category, but animated movies tend to have success as well, since every bit of sound has to be fabricated. While this years nominees aren't exactly the five that I would have selected, the field does offer up a nice variety of genres, deciding not to be exclusive to summer blockbusters and rejecting the likes of "Iron Man 2" and "Salt". As for the nominees themselves, in no specific order.
1. Inception- The clear cut favorite as of right now, and many other technical categories as well. Richard King has done extremely well with the Academy the past decade, being nominated three other times and winning twice with "The Dark Knight" and "Master and Commander". Working with the likes of Nolan, Weir, and Spielberg (other nomination was for "War of the Worlds) tells me this is a smart man, and you never bet against one of those.
2. True Grit- The other film that managed to also capture a Sound Mixing nomination, the sound on this film really helped establish the Ol' Western setting that the Coens were looking for. Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey were nominated here with the Coens two years ago for "No Country for Old Men" as well. It's just a shame that they couldn't make Jeff Bridges understandable.
3. Toy Story 3- Of the nominations, this is probably the last film on the list that I would've included on my own. I fully expected the sheer scale of "How to Train Your Dragon" to allow for a nomination before Toy Story 3, but we can't always be right I suppose. This is Michael Silvers' SIXTH nomination for Pixar in the past decade, so if he's working on "Cars 2" next year, I'll have learned not to count him out of the race. He has yet to bring home a trophy from the Oscars, but I doubt this is the film that finally does it for him. But at the rate that Pixar is moving up in the world, it's only a matter of time before it happens.
4. TRON: Legacy- This is the films that surprised me the most when I heard that it wasn't nominated for Sound Mixing. A lound, special effects oriented film of this scale typically requires skilled sound mixing, but the Academy voters decided to recognize the likes of "The King's Speech" instead. If there is a dark horse to possibly walk away with this award, Tron is it. The two supervisors on this film have worked with a good chunk of the voters, and you can never underestimate the power of simply knowing somebody.
5. Unstoppable- And the last nominee, which not many people saw coming. There were a few out there that spoke of the possibility, but I'm sure it still came to them as a bit of a shock as well. Mark P. Stoeckinger was nominated just last year for "Stark Trek", but this really does seem like a "filler" nomination with no real shot of winning the actual award. It is nice to see that the voters weren't completely asleep on this category and went for something unique, though.
Who will win: Inception, with True Grit in the distant 2nd place.
Who should win: Inception
Dark Horse: TRON: Legacy
