Oscar 2016 - Best Picture

I said it's not a good timing this year. And as much as I'd like to have time to write more (if it would make any sense so close to the awards area), apparently I don't. What's nominated deserves a watch. It's a good selection (compared to other years). What I can say is that I have the certainty ( well, 99% :) ) that this year the last "The Oscar goes to ..." ends with "The Revenant".

Oscar 2016 - Supporting Actor

As said last time - lightning fast: I don't like writing entries about actors, but this year's "supporting actor" is probably one of the most interesting categories considering it's hard to predict anything. We have two nominations which we can leave aside (Christian Bale si Mark Ruffalo) to simplify it a bit. As personal appreciation from who's left, Tom Hardy makes a better role in "The Revenant" than DiCaprio, and if everybody says that DiCaprio finally gets an Oscar this year, it would fair to see one also in Hardy's hands. However, I guess the award will be won by Stallone for "Creed", who had by far the best performance of his career, and I also doubt he will ever top that. Based on the "career representative role" idea BAFTA awarded Mark Rylance for "Bridge of Spies" who's the direct competition, but the Oscars are US based, so ...

Oscar 2016 - Directing

I don't think I ever had such a bad sync between the work to do volume with the period of the Oscar Awards. So, with apologies, I'll just stick to some final lightning fast entries, based mostly on external material ( that's actually more likely to be interesting compared to my senseless babbling :) ). New York Times has a nice series on YouTube, called Anatomy of a Scene, that describes the way a scene in a movie was thought or executed directly from the director's perspective. For the first nominees of this year we have such a clip, which I think gives a pretty concise summary of how each of them works. For the last in the list I found another material that I hope it's at least a bit relevant for the movie directing. In any case, we talk about a category where I doubt there's any doubt on the winner: "The Revenant". However, I can't skip completely saying something about "Room", where the directing is the part that produces the maxed out impact, the movie being built in its first part to be so hard psychologically speaking that I think it competes in a weird way with a hard horror on the difficulty to watch criteria (although there's no other relation with that genre). But, let's see what the nominated ones have to say :) :

Adam McKay - "The Big Short"
George Miller - "Mad Max: Fury Road"
Alejandro G. Iñárritu - "The Revenant"
Lenny Abrahamson - "Room"
Tom McCarthy - "Spotlight"

Oscar 2016 - Film Editing

"The Big Short" is the reason why I decided I must write an entry this year for "film editing". I don't remember when I've seen a movie where the editing has the impact it has here. I also don't think there is any better way to edit this film than what I've seen. The frequency of the cuts, the movement of the focus, the transition between scenes, absolutely everything fully supports the economic thriller nuance that makes this movie watchable, and which also brings it on a very different level compared to another story about the 2008 crisis - "Margin Call". Of course, there's a different point of looking at the facts in the two films, but somehow ironically the full two years development of the event in "The Big Short" is much more engaging than the 24 hours of the crash climax in "Margin Call". And the secret for that stays in the editing. If doesn't win the award this year it really means that the Oscars are unfair ( sort of obvious already, right? :) ).
"Mad Max: Fury Road" is probably the most serious candidate to the first in the list. By definition, a movie full of action can't be good if the editing isn't at least decent. "Mad Max"'s editing is more than decent. It also sets a tone that manages to keep the movie in a constantly alert state, but without making it tiring.
"The Revenant" is probably the most close candidate to the first in the list :) (got the nuance?). Unfortunately the editing here gets in the shadow of the camera work. And somehow doesn't catch your eye. In any case, if you pay enough attention, you'll get some really nice connections between scenes, as the sequence explained below, which deserve the full appreciation.
"Spotlight" is a sort of a light "Big Short" for editing (actually ultra light). Having in common the real story context, and a subject that develops over a long period of time ending in a climax, the comparison is inevitable even though the subject is totally different. Unfortunately we also have big difference in the editing ...
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is the "fill the list" entry here. I'm not gonna spend more time on this one ...

Oscar 2016 - Sound Editing & Mixing

I decided to give my quick picks for this year's sound categories, although this is never easy. I'm starting to believe that's a rule to have here four common nominees for both editing & mixing, plus one different for each. I don't remember when, or if I've noticed any other nominee configuration. About the difference between editing & mixing, oh well ... let's backlink again to older references. At the next link you can find a pretty good summary of where and how the sound gets involved in a movie, and should be clear what part in which category goes: https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/film-editing-stages-sound/ . So, let's move one to the main list ...

"Bridge of Spies" is the single black sheep, or otherwise said the only case with a nomination just for mixing. The movie is nicely done, carefully put together, but I couldn't find any clip more relevant than the one below. It shows somehow the typical sound of the Cold War time. The background music, the rain outside ... In the end that's the role of a final mix: what the sound feels like ... Still, I don't see much winning chance here.
"Mad Max" wins clearly in mixing. Just if we rely on the first impression given by a track that combines a guitar rock solo with burning engines in something noisy but not annoying, and "listenable". On the editing side, the situation is more complicated ...
"The Martian" didn't catch my ear on mixing. For editing, I don't know... We have a storm, other diverse atmospheric events ... Still, what I heard did sound less complex than "Mad Max" or what's following ...
"The Revenant" is my risky pick for a winner on sound editing, very closely followed by "Mad Max" and "Star Wars". Let's just say that I was convinced again by ... the bear :) who apparently is not just a bear (details below - to watch on Vimeo, unfortunately their embedding doesn't seem to work anymore). For mixing it's good but not the best, so let's move forward ...

"Sicario" has a sound editing nomination. I didn't hear anything to impress me. It's a movie with an ok sound, as good on the effects side as many others that include bullets and explosions. However, I'd rather pick the mixing as something that deserves more attention here. But that doesn't show up in the nominees list.
"Star Wars" is closing the day with entries in both categories. And many say it'll win them. And if the editing vote is politically correct has big chances ... I prefer to keep my options above.