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Daniel Crooke here to talk about the pitch-perfect Sound Editing and Mixing montages from this year’s Oscar ceremony that ended in shiny, chrome, and hugely deserved wins for Mad Max: Fury Road. Known to some fair-weather film fans as the mystery stuffing that clogs the airtime between Best Supporting Actress and Actor, the sound categories are often the most overlooked because they’re the least understood. This gives the producers of the Oscars a daunting task – explain the intricacies and differences of two finely tuned crafts and hope that the audience both understands those definitions and why sound is crucial to creating cinematic universes.
This year, the Sound montages demonstrated the transporting power of signals and noises and thrillingly distilled how exactly they’re shaped. More onomatopoeias after the jump...
This was tweeted out by Jake Hamilton today. I assume it's accurate since it looks like the official program.
The hardest category to predict this year is, I mantain, Costume Design. I'd call it the only truly five-wide race. And it's fourth so some real suspense right off the bat. We'll also know very early whether a Kate & Leo reunion is coming since Supporting Actress is third... though I fully expect Alicia Vikander to take that one. [Final Predictions ICYMI]
You'll also notice that they're not doing the short films all at once this year but (perhaps) pairing them with kindred spirit categories (animated short with animated feature, doc short with documentary, and live action short with foreign film... which makes sense since it's often a hodgepodge of foreign shorts that are nominated).
Are you feeling excited yet or merely panicked whilst preparing for your festivities?
P.S. Please enjoy this great Leonardo DiCaprio goodie from The Flippist.
Thanks for reading all year, dear Oscar freaks. I originally published these predictions in my column at Towleroad but the write-ups are expanded here with more details since y'all are movie freaks and I love you for it. Here we go...
The following predictions can be used to inform your Oscar party or office Oscar pool but fair warning: even seasoned Oscar pundits like myself and other Gurus and Experts are confused this year about some categories. As early as last week, for example, I had planned to start this article with an obnoxiously cute bit about the surest prediction being that the producers would try desperately to pretend that Hollywood was very diverse on Oscar night. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. They went and made another anti-diversity blunder, axing performances of two of the Original Song nominees, the two that happen to be sung by a famous Asian soprano and a trans woman. Can we have a round of applause please for Anohni (better known as Antony Hegarty) who has published a must-read personal essay about the insulting behavior of the Academy in regards to her nomination for Best Original Song.
Sigh. It’s like The Academy can’t help themselves!?! They just dig themselves deeper every time. Yet we can’t help ourselves either and continue obsessing over that 13½ inch naked gold man. Let’s look at all 24 categories after the jump...
• Medium wonders why diehard horror fans reject artful genre works like The Witch and It Follows • The Film Doctor reviews Owen Glieberman's book "Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies" • Flick Chicks loving on pets in the movies. Awww • Boy Culture interviews Molly Bernard from TVLand's great sitcom Younger (the one starring Sutton Foster that I'm always hoping you'll start watching. Sutton 4evah!) • The Film Stage an interview with director Robert Eggers of The Witch • Vanity Fair Kate Winslet's son wants her to EGOT. Perhaps Broadway is next?
• Towleroad congratulations to producer Greg Berlanti (The Flash, Brothers & Sisters, Arrow, The Broken Hearts Club, etc...) who welcomes a newborn son via surrogate to the world • Black Phillip from The Witch has his own Twitter account. He boasts a lot and has real species pride • Vanity Fair Amy Adams going to television. She'll star in a series version of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects (which is extremely actress-friendly as we've previously noted) • Awards Daily How the year of the woman became the year of the man... again • Decider Joe Reid ranks EVERY Oscar nominee
Best of Best of • CineMunch the second Annual CineMunchies with prizes to Mad Max and Room and best food & drink moments in movies - I am totally here for that spaghetti scene in Brooklyn • Antagony & Ecstacy Tim finally reveals his top ten list with surprising choices beyond Mad Max and shocking exclusions - no Inside Out? WTF • Cinematic Corner chooses 15 best shots of the year: Crimson Peak, Youth, and more... • Entertainment Junkie's 10 best: Tangerine, Inside Out, and more • VarietyCarol named best film of the year by International Cinephile Society
News That Requires Not Linkage Batman v Superman is going to be 151 minutes long. Uff.
Potentially Awesome TV News We've long hoped that a TV Variety show could air which would really work - it's such a fun abandoned form but too many recent attempts have been shoddy (that Rosie O'Donnell attempt) or so manic they're unwatchable (Neil Patrick Harris's). The Tracking Board says that we could get another attempt as early as this year starring Maya Rudolph (Great choice: She's funny, can act, also rocks) and Martin Short.
Today's Watch How they brought Colossus to life in Deadpool... five different actors and a whole team of visual fx artist
If you haven't fully investigated the Best Picture Chart you should do that today. There are several unusual ways to rank the 8 nominees for Best Picture: machismo factor, number of deaths, MPAA ratings, running time, and more.
Ranking, my friends, is mandatory since Best Picture is determined on a preferential ballot. There's mine to the far right (this was crafted the day of nominations so no "backlash" was in play). Theoretically the preferential voting puts polarizing pictures at a disadvantage but what isn't polarizing these days?
How would you rank them? Are you still undecided as to which film will win? Three good indicators (SAG Ensemble, PGA, and DGA) famously went to three separate pictures (Spotlight, The Big Short, and The Revenant) confusing the matter more than is usual. If you missed the latest podcast Nick and I talked about the most difficult categories to predict which we're guessing are: Picture, Director, Costume Design, Production Design, and Sound
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 8:37PM 
