Cinematographer Roger Deakins Gets His Ninth Nomination for Skyfall; Film Editor William Goldenberg Cited Twice, for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty
This is not a hugely surprising year for Oscar nominations, with the plaudits falling into place more or less as pundits had predicted. The biggest snubs took place in the Best Director category, which left Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn Bigelow and Argo's Ben Affleck out in the cold — likely indicating a consensus forming behind Lincoln, which earned 12 nominations this morning, including nods in the categories of Best Picture, Directing, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Sound Mixing. It narrowly edged Life of Pi, which notched up 11 nominations. Les Misérables and Silver Linings Playbook earned eight nominations each.
Sneaking in among the nine Best Picture nods were the controversial Django Unchained, indie favorite Beasts of the Southern Wild, and the severe, mournful Austrian end-of-life film Amour, whose director Michael Haneke and star Emmanuelle Riva both eked out dark-horse nominations. Those films were flanked in the Best Picture category by the expected front-runners — Argo, Les Misérables, Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty.
Scroll down for a complete list of this year's Oscar nominees. Continue reading for the background of honorees in major craft categories.
Oscar Histories
Film Editing
In the film-editing category, William Goldenberg has doubled his Oscar history, jumping from two previous nominations to a total of four, now that he's been cited for his work on both Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. The latter film was co-edited with Dylan Tichenor, himself a previous nominee for There Will Be Blood (2007). Life of Pi editor Tim Squyres was previously nominated just once, for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Silver Linings Playbook's Jay Cassidy was nominated for Into the Wild (2007), but his co-editor Crispin Struthers is new. The veteran in this category is clearly Michael Kahn (Lincoln), whose seven Oscar nominations date back to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He was a winner for three more Spielberg films — Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Schindler's List (1993), and Saving Private Ryan (1998) — and Lincoln was only the third film that Kahn and Spielberg edited digitally, in the Avid.
Cinematography
Cinematography nominations closely mirrored the ASC Awards nominees, announced yesterday, with the Oscars opting to recognize Robert Richardson, ASC, for Django Unchained in lieu of Danny Cohen, BSC, for Les Misérables. Seamus McGarvey (Anna Karenina), Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi), Janusz Kaminski (Lincoln), and Roger Deakins (Skyfall) were also named by the Academy. These DPs are veterans, for sure. Roger Deakins has now been nominated for a total of nine Oscars, though he has yet to win a single one. Robert Richardson is right behind him with eight nominations, and Richardson has already taken the Oscar stage three times, for JFK (1991), The Aviator (2004), and Hugo (2011).
In order to break his losing streak, Deakins will also have to fight off multiple Oscar-winner Janusz Kaminski, who earned his sixth nomination this year, and is a two-time winner for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Claudio Miranda and Seamus McGarvey, BSC, have both been nominated just once before, Miranda for the VFX-infused The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and McGarvey for Atonement (2007). McGarvey has been especially busy — he was also DP for another 2012 release that commanded some attention, Marvel's The Avengers.
Visual Effects
Speaking of which, you probably have to consider the Avengers VFX team of Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams, and Dan Sudick the one to beat in that category. This is the third nomination for Sirrs, who shared a big one back in 2000 for his work on The Matrix (1999) and earned another for helping Iron Man 2 (2010) take flight. Sudick has four previous Academy nominations under his belt, for Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 2, War of the Worlds (2005), and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). Jeff White and Guy Williams are both Oscar newcomers.
It's tough competition from all sides in that category. Also nominated is the team of Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, and R. Christopher White for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Letteri has clearly been to this show before — his five previous Oscar wins include a 2004 Technical Achievement Award he shared with Christophe Hery and Ken McGaugh for his work on subsurface scattering techniques, plus plaudits for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), King Kong (2005), and Avatar (2009). R. Christopher White was nominated last year for his work with Letteri on Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), and Saindon and Clayton are first-timers.
Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott were nominated for the VFX-rich Life of Pi. Westenhofer is now a three-time nominee with one win to his credit, for The Golden Compass (2007). Rocheron, De Boer and Elliott are Oscar newcomers.
From the Prometheus team, only Trevor Wood is a previous Oscar recipient, having shared that Golden Compass award with Westenhofer. The gorgeously mounted Ridley Scott project thus represents an auspicious Oscar debut for his co-honrees, Richard Stammers, Charley Henley, and Martin Hill.
Finally, from the Snow White and the Huntsman team, Neil Corbould has been previously nominated twice, and won once, for Gladiator (2000). The rest of that group — Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, and Michael Dawson — are Oscar rookies.
Sound Editing
Argo's sound-editing team of Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn has been here before. Van der Ryn is now a five-time Oscar nominee with two wins, for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and King Kong. Aadahl has shared one nomination with Van der Ryn, for Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). Django Unchained's supervising sound editor, Wylie Stateman, makes it his sixth nomination to date, continuing an Oscar history that began with a Best Sound statuette for Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Life of Pi's Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton shared last year's Sound Editing Oscar for Hugo, and Gearty was previously nominated for Gangs of New York (2002). The Skyfall team of Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers won an Oscar for The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), while Hallberg's résumé also includes a win for Braveheart (1995) and a nomination for Face/Off (1997). The fifth nominee, Paul N.J. Ottosson, did double duty on Zero Dark Thirty in both the editing and mixing departments, but only scored a nomination in this category. He was a dual Oscar winner for The Hurt Locker (editing and mixing), and was nominated for sound editing on Spider-Man 2 (2005).
Sound Mixing
Argo's sound-mixing crew reunites John T. Reitz and Gregg Rudloff, who shared one Oscar for The Matrix (1999) along with two more nominations for The Perfect Storm (2000) and Flags of Our Fathers (2006). Reitz's first nomination came for Days of Heaven (1978), while Rudloff's Oscar debut was Glory (1989). The third Argo honoree, José Antonio García, is new to the Oscars.
It was a busy year for Andy Nelson, whose IMDb credits list him as a re-recording mixer on no fewer than five 2012 feature films, A longtime Spielberg collaborator, he's nominated for both Lincoln and Les Misérables, bringing his total to (gulp!) 18 Oscar nominations. There is just one win among those — for Saving Private Ryan — but it's quite a track record nonetheless. His first Oscar nom was for Gorillas in the Mist (1988). One of his co-honorees on Lincoln, Gary Rydstrom, is actually breathing down his neck with a total 17 Oscar nominations and a whopping seven wins, while Ron Judkins now has five nominations and is contemplating a possible third win. Nelson's Les Mis cohorts, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes, are enjoying their first Oscar nominations.
The category is finished off with the nomination of Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell, and Stuart Wilson for Skyfall. Wilson counts this as his second nomination, while Millan and Russell are both Oscar vets. Millan has nine total nominations and four wins (for The Bourne Ultimatum, Ray, Gladiator, and Apollo 13) to his credit, and Russell has 16 total nominations dating to Black Rain (1989).
Curious how those high numbers compare with other filmmaking figures? So were we. But, according to Wikipedia, 16, 17, or even 18 nominations for a single person is hardly a record-breaker. In its list of Miscellaneous Academy Award records, the online encyclopedia notes the following:
- Sound re-recording mixer Kevin O'Connell (Poltergeist, Top Gun, Transformers) has been nominated 20 times without a single win.
- Walt Disney is the most-nominated person ever, with 59.
- Composer John Williams is the most-nominated living person, with 48.
- Costume designer Edith Head was the most-nominated woman, with 35.
- Sound mixer Mark Berger has the most perfect Oscar record, going four-for-four on his nominations for Apocalypse Now (1979), The Right Stuff (1983), Amadeus (1984), and The English Patient (1996)
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