Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Oscar Nominations Handed Out Today


This morning, the Academy released it's list of nominees for the 79th Academy Awards show. You can see the complete list of nominees here.
Best Picture nominees include, "Babel", "The Departed", "Letters from Iwo Jima", "Little Miss Sunshine", and "The Queen".

I will reserve public judgement until I have seen all of these (I have only seen two of the five nominees). I really enjoyed "Little Miss Sunshine". "Babel", not so much, though Cate Blanchett is fantastic in it. I hear the three remaining films are incredible, so I will see them as soon as I can. Then I can adequately root for my fave.

There seem to be no real surprises here, other than a couple disappointing omissions in the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing categories. (go figure I pick that category to pick apart) Actually, the sound categories are full of great sounding films, and the nominees are all deserving. I was pulling for "Superman Returns" (Craig Berkey) and "Cars" (Tom Myers) to make it, but there's only SO much room I guess. I would have a hard time choosing the two films to remove from the list to put these on, so why not make it a seven nominee category??? Dream on.

In case you would like to know, here's this year's sound nominees:

Achievement in Sound Editing:

“Apocalypto” - Sean McCormack and Kami Asgar
“Blood Diamond" - Lon Bender
“Flags of Our Fathers” - Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman
“Letters from Iwo Jima” - Alan Robert Murray
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” -
Christopher Boyes and George Watters II

Achievement in Sound Mixing:

“Apocalypto” -
Kevin O’Connell, Greg P. Russell and Fernando Camara
“Blood Diamond” - Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer and Ivan Sharrock
“Dreamgirls” - Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer and Willie Burton
“Flags of Our Fathers” -
John Reitz, Dave Campbell, Gregg Rudloff and Walt Martin
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” -
Paul Massey, Christopher Boyes and Lee Orloff

So what do you think? Any nominations take you by surprise? What category do you focus on when you watch?


3 comments:

Steve Lee said...

Actually, this is the first year we've been allowed 5 nominees in Sound Editing - but we lost the fun "Bake Off" part of the competition with the change in the rules.

Also...Did you notice Gary Rydstrom was nominated...?

Are you going to the Golden Reels? I'll be there, I'm nominated twice in the same catagory. It will be bitter-sweet for me, since I'm leaving the film sound business...

Mark Keefer said...

Double take on "I'm leaving the film sound business".

What?

This is news to me. We'd better have lunch soon, so you can catch me up!!!!

Good luck on the Golden reels though. I won't be there. Two reasons: it's my 17th wedding anniversary, and I didn't get any noms this year! Boo hoo for me...

I hope you win!

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