The year’s sound mixing category had relatively few surprises, just glancing at the tea leaves of the season.  There was a typical 4/5 crossover between the Cinema Audio Society and the Academy, with “District 9” missing both here and in the sound editing field.

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)

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This has been floating around for a few weeks, actually, but the Academy made it “official” with a press release yesterday.  You can head over to the official AMPAS site to purchase the poster if you like.

The press release, in part:

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)

• Owen Gleiberman nobly asserts that thick-headed attacks on “Precious” as beginning to “say more about the attackers.” [Entertainment Weekly]

• 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]

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As if another accolade was necessary at this point, Kathryn Bigelow was in town this evening to accept SBIFF’s Outstanding Director of the Year award.  The one-two punch of Bigelow here and James Cameron for the fest’s Modern Master honor made for, again, quite the prescient choices from festival director Roger Durling in the fall.

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.

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More on the sound mixing category in tomorrow’s Oscar Guide.  For now, courtesy of the Soundworks Collection:

The fest feels incredibly easy-going this year.  More than last.  Maybe that’s because there aren’t as many films I’m interested in seeing.  After “The Secret of Kells” last week and Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe” later this week, nothing really strikes my fancy.

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.”

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Nearly a year after they first landed on UK television screens, the three feature-length films that comprise the “Red Riding” trilogy have reached American audiences – and in the theatrical environment where they belong, no less.

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.

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I’m bogged down in Santa Barbara and have nothing to add at the moment, frankly, so the column will have to wait until next week.  In the meantime, keep checking out the Oscar Guide specials and having your say in our category polls.

Voted on by a handful of London critics (including IC friend Tim Robey), the Evening Standard Film Awards aren’t the glitiziest of honors, but they always make admirably singular choices. Celebrating the best in British film and talent, they often highlight names and titles below the radar of even the British Independent Film Awards.

As if that wasn’t commendable enough, they earned the distinction last year of being the sole awards body to give Tilda Swinton a Best Actress award for “Julia.”

At tonight’s ceremony, meanwhile, they continued to earn my goodwill as their top prize went to Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank,” beating Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” in the process.

In something of an upset, Carey Mulligan lost Best Actress to “Nowhere Boy” star Anne-Marie Duff, while BAFTA nominee Andy Serkis took Best Actor for the Ian Dury biopic “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.” The night’s winners also included two Oscar contenders: the screenwriting team behind “In the Loop,” and Barry Ackroyd for “The Hurt Locker.” Full list of winners and nominees after the cut.

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I was happy to contribute this top 10 list of Jeff Bridges performances to Fandango’s Awards Watch section.  Those who follow me on Twitter may have noticed many a Tweet aboutt his Bridges film or that over the last few weeks, and that’s because I’ve been burying myself in his work once more while preparing for the piece.

My number one will never budge, but my number two and three are at times interchangeable.  But they’re all great, pitch-perfect performances.  Along the way, I realized what I kind of always knew.  You can always count on him to deliver, whatever the material might be.

Also, across the pond, The Times of London catches up with the actor (actually, they caught up with him in Santa Monica, but you get the picture).  It’s a great observation of the man and opens with a humorous account of a “celebrity-etiquette Mexican standoff” regarding an undelivered birthday party invite.  Good stuff.

More on Bridges and his fellow lead actor nominees in Wednesday’s edition of the Oscar Guide.  Meanwhile, spinning off my Fandango list, feel free to chime in with your list of favorite Bridges performances.

This year’s Best Animated Feature Film race featured five nominees for just the second time in the category’s existence.  It was the result of a robust slate of qualifying contenders that reached the magic number of 16, and yet there was still quality work left lying in the also-rans pile.

There was a wide open fifth slot throughout most of the season as a generally agreed-upon four slowly coagulated.  Come nomination morning, the field therefore offered one of the many exciting surprises as a foreign independent project from a first-time filmmaker one-upped films both critically (”Ponyo”) and commercially (”Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”) successful.

The nominees are:

“Coraline” (Henry Selick)
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Wes Anderson)
“The Princess and the Frog” (John Musker and Ron Clements)
“The Secret of Kells” (Tomm Moore)
“Up” (Pete Docter)

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A few weeks ago we directed you to an Owen Gleiberman piece focusing on the perceived Best Picture battle of “Avatar” vs. “Up in the Air,” that it was a battle of film culture significance.  Obviously, as Gleiberman notes in his recent “my bad” post, that doesn’t appear to be the race anymore, and I’m as guilty for boiling it down at that time as anyone.

If one is still inclined to boil things down to a “race,” then it appears more likely that it is “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar,” and as I noted following the former’s PGA victory, that makes for an incredibly compelling clash of filmmaking values.

“It’s low budget, efficient, muscular independent filmmaking versus blockbuster, groundbreaking, high octane studio entertainment,” I wrote at the time.  “It’s level-headed political realism versus archetypal political grandstanding.  It’s character versus idea.  It’s measured theatrical meditation versus visceral theatrical experience.”  And Gleiberman is now saying virtually the same thing.

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