Category Archives: 2017 Academy Awards

2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Visual Effects

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

The visual effects category at the Academy Awards can be a tough category to call some years. Ex Machina winning last year was a big surprise to me, especially given Mad Max being in contention. The year before that you have Interstellar winning over Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, where either of those films could have taken the prize.

This year’s shortlist has a number of quality effects work on it. So…let’s get to it.

Best Visual Effects

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Animated Feature

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

2016 yielded a flat dichotomy of animated features. There was the good and there was the bad, which makes my job a lot easier here. Four out of five of the Best Animated Feature slots are no brainers. The fifth slot is where the interesting conversation lies.

Best Animated Feature

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Foreign Film

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

The shortlist for the Academy Awards Foreign Language Film category surprised me for one particular reason, and that was the omission of Paul Verhoeven’s Elle. Incidentally, it is also the only film in the running that I had the opportunity to see before writing this article. So….we’re just gonna do the best we can.

Best Foreign Language Film

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

On the morning of January 24, the 2017 Academy Award nominations will be announced. Now that 2017 is finally upon us and Oscar season is in full swing, it is as good a time as any to discuss the potential nominees in all 24 categories.

Yes, I do have no life.

Click the links below for predictions.

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Sound Editing/Sound Mixing

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

The sound design Academy Awards. Oft overlooked and conflated, the sound editing and mixing are pivotal aspects of a film. A good soundtrack mix is seamless and unnoticeable, which is why the Academy likes to reward films with many sound elements that must be mixed. A good sound edit may also involve many sound effects on the soundtrack, or it may be something more subtle.

Here are my picks for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.

Best Sound Editing

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Original Song

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

Best Original Song: the Grammy award of Academy Awards. I always am fascinated by what the Academy does with this category. Films yield very different styles of song, so much so that it often feels inappropriate to compare them to each other in an awards category. But that is exactly what we are here to do.

Best Original Song

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Production Design

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

Production Design is essentially set design. It is the mise-en-scene vision of what will be filmed, whether it be on a sound stage or on location. This said, there were a lot of stellar production design schemes in film in 2016. There is a wide field to pick from, but I’m going to try.

Best Production Design

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Original Score

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

The song and score categories feel like foregone conclusions this year, with one film playing right to what the sound categories are looking for. The real question is what will fill the other four nominee slots.

Best Original Score

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Makeup & Hairstyling

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

The Academy has narrowed down the Best Makeup & Hairstyling category to a shortlist of seven films: Deadpool; The Dressmaker; Hail, Caesar!; Florence Foster Jenkins; A Man Called Ove, Star Trek Beyond, and Suicide Squad. This makes our job a bit easier, buy by no means is there a definitive frontrunner here.

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Film Editing

January 1, 2017 Alex Brannan

The idea of a Best Film Editing award is strange. While editing is an arduous task that certainly deserves to be rewarded, the concept of judging a film’s editing is counter intuitive. The success of an edit is determined by the editor’s ability to hide the fact that cuts are occurring. A seamless experience is what marks a good editing job.

How do you judge a film by its editing, then? Part of it is a rhythm, a pulse in the cuts that contribute to the overall effect of a scene. In the case of a film like La La Land, it is an edit that has musicality and adds energy to a musical number. Another part of it is the editor’s ability to create that seamless experience.