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Saturday, February 23, 2013

2013 Oscar Preview: The Random Categories

Click here for my introduction

BEST ANIMATED FILM

- In a year where all five nominations came from Hollywood and came to a theater near me, I only managed to see two of them: Brave and Wreck-It Ralph
- Wreck-It Ralph is incredible and it upsets me that it's not getting the buzz that previous Best Motion Picture Nominees Toy Story 3 and Up got. Not only was it (in my narrow mind) easily the best animated picture of 2012, but it was one of the best films of 2012 (#2 on my personal list) and one of the best animated films in the past 15 years.
- Brave was visually stunning and the animation- in regards to the setting and such- were stupidly good. However, the story was thin and dull and if Cars 2 didn't exist, Brave would compete for the worst film Pixar has ever produced. That's not saying it's inherently bad, but that is a result of the high bar Pixar set for itself. Either way, I don't think Brave deserves to win or will win.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

- The Queen of Versailles is currently streaming on Netflix. It is an incredible documentary where the documentarian happened to be in the right place at the right time and managed to capture a masterpiece. Director Lauren Greenfield wanted to make a documentary about David Siegel and his wife Jacqueline as they built the biggest house in America. What she ended up filming was their epic collapse and a film about these people's true character. It's amazing. It's a crock that it didn't get a Best Documentary nomination. (BTW, I'm not the only one that feels that way. The internet agrees with me.)



BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

- Yet another Looper snub and another chance for me to champion the film. It's great. Go watch it now.





BEST ORIGINAL SONG

- Adele's "Skyfall" needs to win here. It is just an incredible song on its own (Hell, it IS an Adele song) and one of the best Bond songs of all time. No Bond song has ever won Best Original Song and hopefully this will be the first. It would be a very well deserved win.
- How does "100 Black Coffins" by Rick Ross from Django Unchained not earn a nomination here?! Every single Tarantino film has incredible music to go along with the film because Tarantino has a stellar ear along with his amazing vision. Music and Tarantino films always go hand in hand and Django was no different. Tarantino has never used music created solely for his film before and when he finally did it, it came out amazing as always. Want further proof of the wonderful marriage between Tarantino and music?, check out this slideshow.


BEST SOUND EDITING AND SOUND MIXING

- I bet you do not know the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Here it is. Sound Editing is the process of creating all the sounds that you hear. So when you want to create the sound of a man punching another man and you take an ax to a watermelon (this is what the movies really do), that is Sound Editing. Sound Mixing is the process of taking all those uploaded sounds and MIXING (or editing) them into the movie you see before you.
- It's OK that you don't know the difference between the two, neither does the Academy members. According to HitFix's Kristopher Tapley, everyone in the Academy votes on every single award. Which means actors and screenwriters and such, many of which are like you and do not know the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, still vote in this category. The specific guilds and people with knowledge are the ones doing the nominating, but EVERYBODY votes. Pretty messed up ain't it?
- Also according to Tapley, since no one knows what they are actually voting for, people just vote for their favorite movie. Since Argo is nominated in both categories and I think Argo is going to win Best Picture, logic dictates people will vote "Argo" both times.
- However, (again according to Tapley), musicals tend to do extremely well in the Best Sound Mixing Category. Dreamgirls, Ray, and Chicago are all previous winners of Best Sound Mixing.
- With all these factors in mind, I can actually make an educated guess about the Sound categories. Based upon this new-found knowledge, I predict that Argo wins Best Sound Editing and that Les Miserables wins Best Sound Mixing.


Do you care about any of the categories that do not real with acting, directing, writing, or best film?

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