One might be quick to chalk this, in fact all of the tech races up to the tech-heavy elephant in the room.  But let’s not forget “Slumdog Millionaire” managed a win here last year, over a decently respected piece of blockbuster entertainment.  And at the end of the day, the Academy at large generally just votes for its favorite film of the bunch, rather than think too much about what’s deserving in the field.

The nominees are:

“Avatar” (Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson)
“The Hurt Locker” (Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano)
“Star Trek” (Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin)
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson)

This really is a standard cross-section, three Best Picture nominees, two blockbusters.  But the race is probably down to two films, both of them also in heavy contention for the year’s Best Picture statuette.

“Avatar” was most intriguing for the sense of place it created, the land of Pandora incredibly tangible on the screen.  That invocation stretched to the sonic soundscape of the world, a feat just as commendable as the visual effects that made it a visceral reality.  Four of the industry’s titans lead the field, 39 Oscar nominations between them for work that includes “Return of the Jedi,” “Jurassic Park,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” Titanic” and “The Lord of the Rings.”  This might be the safe call for betting souls on Oscar night.  After all, the film is nothing if not the front-running contender throughout the crafts categories.  But one can’t help but wonder if this particular category is as sewn up as all of that.  A split in the sound categories could most certainly happen this year, as it did last year.

The beneficiary, I think, would be “The Hurt Locker,” which is considered by and large to be the frontrunner for a Best Picture win and showcased some creative and immersive sound design itself.  Director Kathryn Bigelow and her team (Paul Ottosson of the “Spider-Man” franchise leading the way) were concerned with creating a 360 degree sound environment for the war-themed action-suspense flick.  And it is an effective piece of work, lending itself perfectly to the trademark tension of the piece and working nicely in conjunction with a measured, at times quite eerie and participatory score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders.  If you’re looking for a leg up on your Oscar pool, this could be quite the tie-breaker as it is a tighter race than most want to believe.

One of the surprises in the field was “Inglourious Basterds,” though it really shouldn’t have been much of a shock considering the talent involved.  It was always right there on the bubble.  Michael Minkler and his 11 nominations leads the way here, and he’s on quite a roll as of late.  Why?  Well, the last three times he’s been nominated he has won in the category, a streak stretching back to 2001’s “Black Hawk Down.”  Of course two of those were for musicals, gimmes when it comes to the Academy.  But the work on Quentin Tarantino’s film can’t be dismissed all that much.  This is a purposeful piece of filmmaking that relies on its soundscape to ratchet up the tension here, blow out the soundtrack with an action aside there.  I wouldn’t call it a spoiler in the category but it’s certainly a handsome nominee.

For this film-goer’s money, the best example of creating a soundscape in a film this year, the best in both sound fields, in fact, was the summer blockbuster “Star Trek.” From veteran mixing team Anna Behlmer and Andy Nelson, the work was dynamic, creative and most of all, it wasn’t derivative in the slightest.  Finally, for instance, a film is willing to embrace the realities of sound in a space environment (note the whip of silence that hits the track as a trio of “space jumpers” leaps into the vacuum).  The various effects are seamlessly woven in, while Michael Giacchino’s bombastic score is laid quite nicely over the track throughout.  It’s unfortunate that the category is so whittled down to a select two films, but I hold out a modicum of hope that the Academy may want to recognize the film in one of these fields.

It has been a long road to 13 nominations for mixer Greg P. Russell.  Long because he’s yet to win a trophy, largely because the films he works on — like this year’s nominee, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” — are the sort of blockbuster fare that the Academy at large doesn’t respect, even if the work is consistently superlative.  This year Russell partnered up with Gary Summers after parting ways with former partner Kevin O’Connell and the result was the most intricate mix of his career (he’ll gladly tell you).  This was, in fact, the only category where the film was recognized at all, missing in both the sound editing and visual effects fields.  It’ll likely be another year of staying in his seat for Russell, but that can’t take away from the vibrant, innovative work that went into this mix.

Will win: “Avatar”
Could win: “The Hurt Locker”
Should win: “Star Trek”

Should have been here: “Antichrist”

What do you think deserves to win this year’s Oscar for Best Sound Mixing?  Have your say in the sidebar poll!

The Works International is delighted to announce the acquisition of Academy Award® nominated documentary THE COVE by Japanese distributor Medallion Media which is planning a tentative release date of April 2010 in Japan.

Until now Japanese distributors have shied away from the award-winning documentary which generated huge coverage and controversy in Japan when it was finally included in the line-up of the 2009 Tokyo Film Festival after initially being rejected. Despite threats of legal action by fishermen from the town of Taiji featured in the film, the festival scheduled another screening after the first sold out within hours. Most Japanese are unaware of the annual dolphin cull that takes place in Taiji and also the significant risks of mercury poisoning from the eating of dolphin meat which the film so effectively exposes. In spite of continued opposition from the Taiji fishermen, Medallion Media recognized there were many people keen to see the film. Says Norio Okahara, Director of Medallion Media: “In distributing THE COVE we are not taking sides. Rather, we are presenting the film for the Japanese to decide for themselves about the issues it raises. There is a debate to be had here and this important film – and the Academy Award® nomination only serves to reinforce its importance – offers the opportunity for such a debate.”

The film and director Louie Psihoyos will be recognized in Santa Barbara Wednesday night.

(Courtesy: Bennett Media)

• Michelle Griffin sits down with quasi-surprise nominee Janet Patterson to discuss the threads of “Bright Star.” [The Age]

• Anne Thompson goes back and forth with Moviefone’s Jack Matthews on the subject of Quentin Tarantino’s legacy. [Thompson on Hollywood]

• Mike Fleming on dwindling studio awards campaign expenditures. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

• News flash: James Horner can be derivative of his own work. [/Film]

• Best Supporting Actor nominee Christopher Plummer talks “The Last Station” across the pond. [The Independent]

• Gregg Kilday looks at the short races but seems to offer nothing besides synopsis material.  [Hollywood Reporter]

• Carrie Mulligan reaches the masses through McPaper. [USA Today]

The retrospective was emceed by Durling, which was endearing.  Two incredibly shy personalities on the stage at one time.  Lots of “ums” and “uhs,” but they caught their rhythm some time around the “Near Dark” discussion, which is when Durling said Bigelow first caught his attention.  He said he was fascinated by how Bigelow would take genres and deconstruct them, paint with different, darker shades.  Like melding a biker film with film noir in “The Loveless,” or attempting a western through the tools of the horror genre in “Near Dark.”

Of course, Bigelow’s big achievement this year is no exception to this feature of her work.  It has long been a point of discussion that “The Hurt Locker” isn’t a typical war film, but a combination of suspense, action and, indeed, deep dramatic hues.  And like all of her work, an intense focus on character is at the fore.

As a fan who picked up on Bigelow beginning with 1991’s high octane “Point Break,” I was most interested to hear anything she had to say about that.  Of course, with the tragic passing of Patrick Swayze earlier this year, it was all the more noteworthy, and Bigelow shared a story I’ve heard before, only slightly different, that illustrated Swayze’s commitment as an actor.

Swayze was an avid skydiver, but the insurance company on the film wouldn’t allow the production to shoot him jumping from a plane.  Heaven forbid something happen to the lead actor during the middle of shooting a studio production such as this.  But Swayze had a solution.  He was planning to go skydiving out of a local airfield and told Bigelow to grab a camera and come shoot it.  That way it’s not on the studio’s time or dime and no one can stop him from jumping.

The “Adios” scene in the film, shooting Swayze back-flipping out of a small plane, that was the result.

As far as “The Hurt Locker” is concerned, I perked up when Bigelow began describing both her approach to casting and to sound design.  First and foremost, as has been made mention before, the casting of Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes, recognizable actors who have extremely limited screen time due to what happens to their characters, was meant to reflect the disorientation and randomness of war.  You never know who’s going to be left standing and often times, it might not be who you thought it would be.

Second, on sound design, she said she worked with sound mixer Paul Ottosson to create a “360 sound environment” on the film, another attempt at immersion (of a sort) for the viewer.  But I’ll dig more into that in tomorrow’s Oscar Guide.

Action film director Andy Davis was on hand to present the award to Bigelow, offering a brief but eloquent speech about how closely their work is intertwined based on the cast and crew they’ve shared over the years.

It was a lovely evening and just one more feather in a veritable headdress of honors for Bigelow this season.  Next stop: Oscar’s stage (surely).

Yesterday before darting back down the 101 for a Super Bowl party in LA, I caught about an hour or so of the directors panel, “Directors on Directing.”  It was an engaging discussion between Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Lee Daniels, Pete Docter, Todd Phillips and Quentin Tarantino, and absolutely packed house.  Jason Reitman couldn’t make it.

The most interesting bit that I saw was Tarantino discussing the immersive experience of “Avatar,” how when filming “Kill Bill,” he was very interested in the experience of a movie and making the audience feel participatory in some way.  He said he thinks he failed to do that, though some sequences, namely the House of Blue Leaves sequence, were close, but when he saw “Avatar,” he said, “That’s it.  That’s the ride I was thinking about.”

I got back in town just in time for the Virtuosos after party at The Canary Hotel with honorees Michael Stuhlbarg, Saoirse Ronan, Carey Mulligan and Emily Blunt in attendance.  Shockingly I have not crossed paths with Mulligan all year long and it was nice to exchange some pleasantries.

She seemed most pleased to be in the company of the category, noting Meryl Streep and her self-effacing sense of humor as a particular high mark for the season.  One must keep in mind that “An Education,” much like “Precious,” has had a very long year and managed to keep enough fuel in the tank to push it across the finish line.  Mulligan is definitely enjoying the film’s ride but she’s ready to get back to work, she says.  She’s finishing up some looping on Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” this week.

This morning I saw Shane Dax Taylor’s “Provinces of Night” earlier this morning.  Well, I was at the Metro to see Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark,” actually, part of a retrospective on her work today, but it had apparently been moved to the Lobero and I was running late.  I knew T Bone Burnett had worked on “Provinces” and knowing absolutely nothing of the narrative, I figured I’d give it a go.

The film features a bizarre mish-mash of talent.  There’s Val Kilmer, pot-bellied, stalking the frame with his hilarious Nashville get-up and constant buzz-verging-on-binge.  Then there’s Dwight Yokam, who shows up for a scene of trademark tension before disappearing from the plot for convenience’s sake.

Great character actor W. Earl Brown (who also wrote the film) offers an over-the-top but nevertheless intriguing performance as a, well, lunatic, while Kris Kristofferson lurks here and there with an easy chair turn as a returning patriarch in rural Tennessee.

Oh, and Barry Corbin (the “can’t stop what’s coming” gent from “No Country for Old Men,” for those who can’t remember “WarGames” or “Northern Exposure”) has a brief cameo that’s positively hilarious.  And Hilary Duff is front and center, too.

What can I say?  It’s an overreaching story of a family ruined by the events of a mysterious past and the one young man (Reece Thompson) who might make something of himself.  The plot flies headlong off the rails after struggling to keep the ship righted throughout, but it also creates a definite sense of place and character that reminded me of the more accomplished “That Evening Sun” in some ways.  I was invested in the story, however elementary it felt at times.

See it for Val Kilmer if nothing else.  The guy will do just about anything these days, it seems.

Next I finally got around to some Bigelow action (there will be a celebration of her work later this evening), and it was the deplorable “Blue Steel,” rather than “Strange Days,” as the festival couldn’t get a print of the latter.  Man, I forgot just how BAD the Jamie Lee Curtis film is.  It definitely showed some early visual storytelling chops for Bigelow, but that script — ouch.  I guess every amazing filmmaker has some skeletons in the closet.

More as it happens.

IFC is marketing and distributing “Red Riding,” an adaptation of David Peace’s decade-spanning quartet of crime novels inspired by the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders, as a single theatrical event. The truth, however, is that these are three very distinct, even self-standing, works from three dissimilar directors: Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker.

Where “Man on Wire” director Marsh’s documentary chops are evident in a film that takes on the nuts and bolts of police corruption, and Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie”) takes a straightforward character-based approach to tie up loose ends, Jarrold’s film, the opener, is the most boldly stylized of the three.

Following young journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) as he probes the disappearance of a young girl and becomes ill-advisedly involved with her grieving mother (Rebecca Hall), the film consciously fuses the languages of film noir and social realism to striking effect.

If it’s the most surprising film of the trilogy, that’s partly because so little in Jarrold’s filmography prepared us for this confident formal leap: an accomplished TV director, he made his feature directing debut in 2005 with the comedy “Kinky Boots,” before moving on to a pair of tepid period pieces, “Becoming Jane” and “Brideshead Revisited.” Thanks to its crossover media format, however, “Red Riding” afforded Jarrold the best of both worlds.

“From the start, the attraction of the project is that it was both film and television,” the London-based director tells me over the phone. “Tony [Grisoni]’s script was very filmic, and I could see that it would have a life on cinema. Reading it, the cinematic devices it prompted – sound design, cinematography, music – made it clear this wasn’t another procedural TV drama.”

The crossover media format of the project, however, gave Jarrold greater freedom to spread his wings. “With TV, I’d ventured into darker thriller territory before,” he says, citing “Never Never,” a solemn, BAFTA-nominated miniseries set on a London council estate, as an example. “But with my features, I risked getting typecast as the go-to man for posh period drama. Now, in America, they can see what else I can do.”

Jarrold was unfamiliar with Peace’s novels when he was invited onto the project, though he soon rectified that. “Peace didn’t have quite the cult following he does now. But I was struck immediately by this uncompromising, unflinching journey, with an atmosphere that recalls American crime fiction, and a bleak sense of humor that’s very British at the same time. And I loved Eddie, that he’s this flawed, cocky guy who discovers humanity in himself.”

Jarrold was the first director to claim aboard the project, followed in succession by Tucker and Marsh. From the outset, the three directors had differing visions for their chapters, beginning with the shooting style: Jarrold decided to shoot in 16mm, Marsh in 35mm and Tucker on HD.

“We didn’t consciously say, “Let’s be different,” but it works to the benefit of the film,” Jarrold explains. “For me, I wanted the film to evoke my memory of the 1970s, and the graininess of 16mm captures that drab, smoky era. I remain a big champion of film – most TV shot on digital looks awful, just devoid of atmosphere.”

By necessity, the directors collaborated in the casting process (“We didn’t come to blows, fortunately”), but worked independently for the most part. “The books themselves don’t follow on directly from each other, so in a way, it’s true to their spirit to have the vision of three different directors.”

The storytelling, too, needed to be carefully calibrated, as Jarrold’s film opens lines of investigation that are closed in the following chapters. “There was an interesting balance in making an individual film that nonetheless has greater resonance as part of a trilogy. There’s a kick for the audience in making the connections between them – like hearing one half of a phone conversation, and later, the other. Poor Anand had the task of tying up all our loose ends.”

As well received as the films were on their UK television debut, Jarrold is pleased that they have found what he sees as their natural home in U.S. theaters. “They’re films, in the end,” he says. “There are so many details in the sound design, for example, that are just subliminally present on TV, but in the cinema, you really get it. And my biggest inspirations for the film were cinematic ones: film noir, conspiracy thrillers like ‘The Parallax View’ and ‘The Conversation.’”

It’s no accident, Jarrold emphasises, that these reference points are American. (He’s guarded but curious about the proposed U.S. remake by Ridley Scott.) “My idea from the start was that this was a very British story told in an American way, using American genres. So there’s an interesting irony in switching the location.”

He pauses, before audibly brightening. “But the U.S. response to ours — at Telluride, in New York — has already been terrific. There’s been more interest there, dare I say, than here in Britain. It’s a picture of England they’re not used to seeing.”

The “Red Riding” trilogy is in limited release now.