CAS Nominees & Oscar Predictions. Do you like the sound of these movies?

The Cinema Audio Society, which awards the sound mixing in movies, is our only real clue beforehand of how the two sound categories (mixing and editing) at the Oscars might go. The MPSE, which honors their brethren, the sound editors, doesn't announce its nominees for "The Golden Reels" until two weeks after the Oscar nominations. So this morning's announcement is another last minute reminder that Nathaniel (c'est moi) needs to get both his final Oscar predictions on (TODAY AND TONIGHT) and publish those Film Bitch Award nominations -- at least the Oscar correlative categories (TODAY AND TOMORROW) -- which are his own long-running film honors and should not to be confused with the Team Experience Awards which come from the contributors here and are going up in one week's time. 

So basically ALL of that is happening... simultaneously. Maybe. Definitely. Hopefully. But how ???

Surveillance footage of TFE Headquarters, shows Nathaniel stockpiling snacks, Motrin, and water bottles. The latter he will both drink from and pee in, as he's not allowed to move until Friday morning once Oscar noms have sufficiently sunken in. But first he is downing pots of coffee, typing this very post you're reading and begging himself to quit typing in the third person.

CAS Nominees for the film year, as well as both Oscar Predictions and Film Bitch Awards. Yes we're doing it all (Yipee) after the jump

CINEMA AUDIO SOCIETY 

MOTION PICTURE - LIVE ACTION 

• Bridge of Spies
• The Hateful Eight
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Revenant
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Mad Max Fury Road is of course a no brainer in the sound categories whether you're talking predictions or who is deserving (and those should always be separate concerns as confused as some groups get over it). Star Wars is another "duh" -- as detailed in our Star Wars & Oscar post, sound is often a likely category for that galaxy far far away. Color me a little puzzled that The Hateful Eight was honored. This is not due to my distaste for it. My tastes have no bearing on guild or Oscar honors. It's just that it's not particular showy from a sound perspective and the Cinema Audio Society usually skips Tarantino. They did not nominate Inglorious Basterds or Django Unchained or well ANY Tarantinos in the past so this seems like an awfully strange place to start, wouldn't you agree? The same cannot be said of Oscar. The Academy nominated Inglourious Basters for both sond categories and Django Unchained for sound editing. How neither organization was impressed by the sound of either volume of Kill Bill -- to these ears the best sounding Tarantino -- is... well what can you do?

MOTION PICTURE—ANIMATED

• The Good Dinosaur
• Hotel Transylvania 2
• Inside Out
• Minions
• Peanuts 2

The guilds generally stick to American animation only (unlike the Oscars) when they're honoring cartoons. Animation is an interesting beast when it comes to sound & Oscar. Obviously everything must be created rather than "recorded" as it were during filming so it's quite an achievement when they work so superbly on that level. For a brief time (2004-2010) Oscar voters liked to have an animated film at the grownup table for sound nomations but that impulse seems to have passed them by... which brings up the question of how well Inside Out might do. Can it muscle its way into Oscar's sound categories? The last animated film to do so in mixing was WALL•E and the last in sound editing (where it's more frequent) was Toy Story 3.  

Further Reading: Final Oscar Predictions in all Sound Categories
Film Bitch Awards: Nathaniel's Nominees in all Sound Categories

And now we wrap up with a very spedy roundup of the Cinema Audio Society's television and tech prizes...

CINEMA AUDIO SOCIETY - TELEVISION

 CAS NOMINEES TELEVISION MOVIE or MINI-SERIES 

• American Crime "Episode 1"
• American Horror Story: Hotel "Room Service"
• American Horror Story: Hotel "Checking In"
• Fargo S2 "Episode 5"
• True Detective "Down Will Come"

I remain truly annoyed, and am reminded of that annoyance at Emmy time and every other TV award time, that tv shows don't display the title of their episodes onscreen. They seem to only be used for recording guides and DVD packaging. If a title exists, why not display it onscreen? For what it's worth Room Service is the Hotel episode where Kathy Bates gets thirsty and violent and also where The Countess takes Chloe Sevigny in as nanny of sorts... but man is that woman terrible with children. I don't remember which episode of True Detective that is but I hope it's the one where closet case Taylor Kitsch gets it on with his boyfriend.

TELEVISION SERIES - 1 HOUR 

• Better Call Saul "Marco"
• Game of Thrones "Hardhome"
• Homeland "The Tradition of Hospitality"
• House of Cards "Chapter 27"
• The Walking Dead "First Time Again"

I can only trust technical prize nominations from guilds when they veer away from shows or movies that are always in the running for Best Drama (and every other category). I'm sure some are deserving but you never know if the heat of the title itself is drawing people in. So I'm betting The Walking Dead must have really good sound in that episode (the sixth season premiere) since that show is never up for Best Drama at the Emmys

TELEVISION SERIES – 1/2 HOUR 

• Modern Family "Connection Lost"
• Nurse Jackie "Managed Care"
• Parks and Recreation "One Last Ride: Part 1"
• Silicon Valley "Server Space"
• Veep  "Mommy Meyer"

This category if very long in the tooth, yes. Lots of shows on their last legs or actually final season.

TELEVISION NON-FICTION, VARIETY or MUSIC SERIES or SPECIALS

• Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown: Madagascar
• Deadliest Catch: Lunatic Fringe
• Keith Richards:  Under the Influence
• Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
• Live from Lincoln Center: Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton 

What a hodgepodge of types in one category, eh? How will the voters ever decide how to compare these apples and oranges... apples and skydiving and unicorns

TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD NOMINATIONS

PRODUCTION

• Aaton Cantar X3
• Lectrosonics Venue 2
• Sound Devices SL-6
• Zaxcom Wide Band Recording Digital Wireless 

POST-PRODUCTION:

• Accusonus – ERA-D
• The Cargo Cult: Conformalizer 4
• Cedar DNS One with Learn
• Izotope RX5 

We don't know what any of these 8 things mean but a hearty congratulations to the 8 nominees who surely do since they pioneered them.

Comments

[Steph Bello]

To me it's not just that The Hateful Eight was nominated here but that they made room for it by specifically leaving out The Martian. I'm genuinely shocked that a film like that with good review,s, great box office, and a legendary director in talks for winning Best Director, is missing with so many of these precursor awards. Is it just that there are too many action/sci fi/blockbuster films in the running this year?

[/3rtful]

The halving of Kill Bill killed its awards appeal. Of course there is genre bias and Tarantino after Jackie Brown was not seen as the essential auteur he has defaulted to in the present part of his career where he is making less worthy movies but reaping huge box office and Oscar wins.

[Jonathan]

I thought "The Hateful Eight" had terrific sound work, although I'm more inclined to cite in in Sound Editing rather than Mixing. But it's great - you can hear everything happening in that cabin at all times, and the blizzard raging outdoors is always kept in there, too. Very detailed and crisp.

For me, I'm missing "Love & Mercy" and "Creed." The former for how inventively and evocatively it actually puts us in the head of Wilson, distorting and reincorporating various Beach Boys tunes in seas of audio (this is a movie *about* sound! How could they pass it up?), and the latter for its amazingly immersive fight sequences and seamless integration of music.

[Nathaniel R]

Jonathan -- nicely put. i can see that.

[Evan]

If it could have escaped the Foreign Language ghetto (er... bad analogy?), Son of Saul would have made a welcome addition here. The sounds were clear, haunting, and thankfully so for a film that restricts the camera and avoids showing some of the most important goings-on.

[brooooke]

Surprised Mr Robot didn't show up in the TV catergories. That show sounds amazing, the music and soundscape make the show what it is....

[Paul Outlaw]

I had the same thought as Evan.