You know, since it seems as though everyone’s attention is so focused on what film will win Best Actor or Best Actress at the Academy Awards tonight (not that hard to figure out, guys), we here at The Playlist have decided to concentrate our interest into two other categories that could in fact mean the difference between you winning your Oscar pool or not. of course, we’re talking about the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing awards. Just because we still don’t really know the difference between these two areas, doesn’t mean they’re not important…and it doesn’t mean we can’t correctly predict the winners either.
Now if you’re debating whether or not just checking the same film for both categories, consider this – Over the past 8 years, the Oscars for both sound mixing and sound editing have gone to the same film only 3 times. Those were: “Bourne Ultimatum” (2007), “King Kong”(2005), and “Return of The King” (2003). So since Peter Jackson doesn’t have a film in the running this year, we would say the odds are against it. Now the question becomes, which films and for which category should I choose?
Well, what might help are the Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards, which wereconveniently just announced. Check them out…
Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley, Music, Dialogue and ADR Animation in a Feature Film:
Wall-E
Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR in a Foreign Feature Film
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Sound Editing: Music in a Feature Film
The Dark Knight
Best Sound Editing: Music in a Musical Feature Film
Mamma Mia!
Best Sound Editing: Dialogue and ADR in a Feature Film
I think everyone’s sort of viewing “Slumdog” as the default win for anything now; I’m gonna guess that one of the Sound awards will go to Dark Knight (I think it’ll do surprisingly well in the technical categories and will be counted as an upsetter, perhaps even in cinematography).
The other sound award will go to Wall-E, I think; it’s really Ben Burtt’s film and his time to shine–basically it’ll be like a Best Actor award for the man.
To split or not to split, that is the question. It seems everyone I ask can’t figure out what to predict either, as it truely is a roll of the dice at this point.