Sound Mixing to ‘Hurt Locker’ and Cinematography to ‘White Ribbon’

I find these two awards to be incredibly important when it comes to predicting the lower half of the Oscar categories, as the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) have announced their awards tonight and one isn’t much of a surprise and the other is more of a welcome surprise.

First for the ASC, which handed Christian Berger the award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography for his work on the beautifully shot black-and-white feature from Michael Haneke The White Ribbon. I declared the film number four on my top ten and absolutely loved every frame. However, this is probably looked as a bit of an upset as I imagine most any technical award will look when Avatar is involved.

In my last round of predictions I handed every technical award to Avatar as a solid base level to start moving into this final week before the Oscars. Tonight the $2.4+ billion behemoth has shown yet another weakness and it doesn’t end with cinematography.

At the Cinema Audio Society Awards I looked at it as a battle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, the latter of which was merely a monetary underdog, but I am happy to see Kathryn Bigelow’s sound mixing team made up of Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett earning the award.

This puts an interesting twist on the Oscar sound awards as the Motion Picture Sound Editors recently awarded Avatar and Inglourious Basterds and now the CAS hands their award to The Hurt Locker. While editing and mixing remain entirely different categories, I can’t help but wonder if a split at the Academy Awards will follow, or if one will sweep them both? I am, now, much more inclined to stick to my original split decision and figure that’s the direction I will go, but more on that later this week when I reveal my final predictions and ask for yours as well.

For now, here are the winners as well as the nominees for each, with the winners clearly marked. We’re only seven days away, and I am feeling rejuvenated and ready for the Oscars… are you?

American Society of Cinematographers

Cinema Audio Society

Thanks goes to SoundWorksVideo and Steve Pond for up-to-the-minute results for each award.