OVP: Altered States (1980)

Film: Altered States (1980)

Stars: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid

Director: Ken Russell

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Every genre of movie has a pretty wide berth when it comes to its description.  Think of something like "comedy" where everything from the films of the Three Stooges to the polished wit of Noel Coward to the black-hearted works of Yorgos Lanthimos are somehow under the same umbrella.  This is true of horror as well, as we see with Ken Russell's film Altered States.  This is definitely a horror film, fit snuggly into the concept of body horror, and one that was nominated for a pair of Oscars (as we've said, this is pretty rare for horror pictures, particularly when you're talking Best Score).  But it's also quite cerebral, and could easily be a thriller (or, honestly, just a SciFi Drama).  We will consider it, though, for the sake of our conversation this month, a horror film, and a pretty odd one.

(Spoilers Ahead) Ken Russell's films are quite heady so I''m going to give you a high-level look into the plot, but know that I'm missing some things.  We have Eddie Jessup (Hurt), a scientist who is studying schizophrenia but becomes obsessed with the concept of studying other states of consciousness.  The movie leans in on this as he moves into a sensory deprivation tank, and enjoys the secession from reality that it affords.  Years later, he is still obsessed with this concept, despite having domesticated a bit (he's married to his wife Emily, played by Brown, and has two daughters).  His marriage nearly in shambles, he goes to Mexico to study a tribe that has shared hallucinatory states, and is able to join them with a magical mushroom potion, one that he steals & brings home to study in the lab.  Continued time in the tank shows that he is manifesting or reverting to some sort of caveman state of being, one that is potentially killing him, but that he becomes addicted to experiencing so he can understand what is happening beyond himself.  The films ends with him nearly transcending to another plane, but because it's going to come at the cost of Emily, he decides not to do it, and they reunite, their marriage on the mend.

The film is one that I'd find really hard to love, but I also understand & respect those who are into.  It deals with a lot of larger concepts, and I don't think it works.  On some level it's clearly about the Frankenstein myth, with Eddie wanting to create something beyond himself, understanding mankind in a different level.  In doing this, it's noteworthy that he becomes estranged from his wife, who actually has created other life (their two daughters), which is the core of the Frankenstein myth-men are obsessed with this thing that women can do and they cannot.  I don't think, though, that Russell has enough to say about this-he shoots for the wider reachs of the universe, asking questions, but because these questions are unknowable, he can't really find the answers.

The film's two Oscar nominations I was in the middle on, even if the film looks pretty good (the creepy-crawly skin effects on William Hurt are well-done...and also kudos to Russell for making sure to have totally unnecessary male nudity in a genre where we almost always get that for women but not men).  The sound is intriguing, but it's also repetitive, and honestly, this would be much more in the "sound effects" category we'd get soon after this than the mixing I'm accustomed to (they were combined then).  The Score, a rare nomination for John Corigliano who would pull off one of the category's great upsets 19 years later for The Red Violin, is solid but again, not exactly to my tastes.  It's interesting, it fits the film, but it's not as iconic as you'd want from one of the rare entries into the horror genre nominated for Best Score.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Sound (1999)

OVP: Best Sound (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Robert J. Litt, Elliot Tyson, Michael Herbick, & Willie D. Burton, The Green Mile

Andy Nelson, Doug Hemphill, & Lee Orloff, The Insider

John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, David Campbell, & David Lee, The Matrix

Leslie Shatz, Chris Carpenter, Rick Kline, & Chris Munro, The Mummy

Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, Shawn Murphy, & John Midgley, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

My Thoughts: In the 1990's and early 2000's, the Sound Editing category was a sporadic number (either 2 or 3 nominations) while the Sound Mixing category stayed steady at five, so we are now back to 5-wide races, and here we will stay for the remainder of the 1999 Oscar Viewing Project.  The Sound Mixing category has gone through a lot of shifts through the years, from the 1940's where it felt like more a way to reward each sound department at each studio to the 1960's when it would shift into a conversation about musicals.  By the 1990's, though, there weren't really any musicals, and the ones that were were animated (and Oscar wasn't yet nominating them here).  Instead, they focused more on loud, on big epic sounds, particularly things like action-adventures and SciFi/Fantasy movies.

Case-in-point, we have The Matrix which blends both of those worlds.  We talked in our previous article (all links to past 1999 contests as well as past Sound Mixing races are at the bottom of this page) about how The Matrix uses machinations in their underground world to create this sort of sewer-like universe alongside the pretend one.  This is also reflected in the sound mixing, which uses the film's heavy soundtrack to full impact, incorporating it as almost another character.  You get drops in noise for key dialogue (think of Neo's conversation with the Oracle), and the way that the noise is always building to something (again, Neo's conversations with Agent Smith).  A really special & succinct vision, one the Wachowskis know how to do in creating their SciFi opuses.

Speaking of SciFi opuses, we of course have as The Matrix's chief competition for the Oscar Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which probably would've swept the same Oscars that The Matrix took (save for the shock Film Editing trophy) without that movie taking hold of pop culture.  Again, this would be a really good choice.  Much of the sound mixing is important here because large swaths of the film are either animated or (in the case of the original Yoda) puppetry, so you have to match this up against live-action dialogue that's happening in real-time.  This has been a thing for decades (just look at Mary Poppins or Bedknobs and Broomsticks), but few have done it so well, making you feel like the characters that are next to these figures are real and having actual conversations.

I'll be honest-these two are the frontrunners for the reason: they're also the best.  That isn't to say there's not some decent work lying around in the remainder.  The Insider is a movie that uses a lot of conversations to get through, and like all Michael Mann movies, that's used for heightened tension.  Think of the phone conversation scenes, the rapid-fire editing allowing for clips, clicks, and noise between the two actors onscreen basically trying to stave off death.  But for me, a lot of this feels too invisible, with the filmmakers just doing their job.  I don't feel like we're getting something that calls out the sound mixing, just that it's good for what it is.

That said, it's better than The Green Mile.  The Green Mile is not a good movie (it had no business in the Best Picture field), and while the biggest problem with it is that it's too long, it's also a case where it is a bit too heightened, and that reflects in the sound mixing.  While The Insider uses its noise to give off a sense of when it's important, signaling to the viewer subtly what's about to happen, The Green Mile telegraphs with a blow horn.  Giant swells in the music, and dialogue that feels like it's dripping with saccharine comes across in the sound mix, trying to play on your emotions, but really it's just doing something to your digestive system.

The final nomination is The Mummy, a cheesy B-Movie that I have always had a fondness for.  The movie's sound editing is more impressive than the mixing, though the score is incorporated in an old-school 1960's vibe that I quite liked, and the dialogue is really well heard (even if it's cheesy).  I think it helps, as well, that the action scenes all work properly-there's no case where the many exploding sand dunes and crashed planes are causing you not to hear what's onscreen.  If I had some tweaks, I might have made a little less derivative approach to the resurrection scenes, which are all ones we've seen countless times before (it's practically the same speeches), but this is fun, and I'm glad Oscar nominated it in at least one category.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Cinema Audio Society did not yet split its categories between Live-Action and Animated in 1999, so we have a direct comparison here, though they definitely did their own thing.  The Matrix won, beating American Beauty, Any Given Sunday, Star Wars-The Phantom Menace, & The Sixth Sense.  At the BAFTA's, The Matrix also won, here besting American Beauty, Buena Vista Social Club (one of the few 1999 movies I still have left that I really want to finish before we get to My Ballot), and The Phantom Menace. In sixth place...it's gotta be American Beauty, right?  The Sixth Sense is a good guess, but horror is anathema to tech categories (even though it shouldn't be), and American Beauty won Best Picture...I'm going with the suburban drama.

Films I Would Have Nominated: This isn't a bad list (save for one), so it's hard to be too mad, but if I was going to put my spin on it, I'd definitely throw in The Sixth Sense.  The film's the best example of using jump scares and a spooky score to your advantage, and I think horror deserves its spot in the sound field.

Oscar’s Choice: The Matrix dominated all season, and this wasn't an exception-another trophy where it took out The Phantom Menace.

My Choice: And I'm going to join the Academy-the sound work in The Matrix is too good to ignore in my humbled opinion.  Behind it I'll select (in order) Star Wars, The Insider, The Mummy, and The Green Mile.

Those are my choices-how about you?  Do we all feel like the whole season got it right by selecting The Matrix, or do you want to sign up for a different picture?  Am I missing something with The Green Mile, or is this just a case of Oscar having bad taste?  And was it American Beauty or The Sixth Sense just out of reach?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 1999: Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Sound Mixing Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

Film: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

Stars: Debbie Reynolds, Harve Presnell, Ed Begley, Jack Kruschen, Hermione Baddeley

Director: Charlie Walters

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Actress-Debbie Reynolds, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Scoring, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1964, Debbie Reynolds had been America's Sweetheart for about a decade, and similar to the two other women that we've talked about this season (Audrey Hepburn & Doris Day) who reigned alongside her with that crown, she was about to have that title (and her position as a box office queen) put into question.  But before that, Reynolds got something that clearly meant a lot to her: an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.  Reynolds is generally considered to be a really winning screen presence, but I'll be honest-I don't see a lot of people praising her for her acting ability, or at least that's not the leading reason that people talk about her.  She is oftentimes praised as "charming" on the big-screen, or that she is a damned fun celebrity, but save for Singin' in the Rain, none of her movies during this time frame enjoys a really solid critical reputation, and she's far more in Day's ballpark than Hepburn's when it comes to acclaim.  I had seen parts of The Unsinkable Molly Brown years earlier, but had virtually no memory of it (to the point where I decided it should count as a "never seen it" qualifier for this series), and was curious for the one Oscar nomination that Reynolds did get, was the public (and to some degree me, who likes her but doesn't think of her as a "great" actress in the same way as peers like Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor) underestimating her?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Molly Brown (Reynolds), a woman who grew up from nothing and then became a fixture in high society at the turn-of-the-century, though it has to be said that this is a highly fictitious telling of her life story.  She starts as a backwoodsman, raised to be a tomboy by her adopted father Seamus (Begley), but she soon falls in love with Johnny Brown (Presnell), a lazy drunk and mining prospector who tries to woo her first on his own terms, and then on her terms (she wants to be a wealthy society woman).  They strike it rich, becoming "new money" but are not accepted by Denver's elite.  To get around this, she befriends multiple royals while galavanting around Europe with Johnny, and comes back with these royals in tow.  She now has the friends to make it in polite society, but Johnny isn't happy, and they grow apart.  While aboard the Titanic, she keeps spirits alive on a lifeboat, and is proclaimed a hero by the town, and comes back to Johnny, their love rekindled, now with them being themselves once more.

The movie is overstuffed, overlong, and far too silly for my tastes.  The beginning of the film is basically just Calamity Jane, complete with the adorable Reynolds with her face covered in dirt and her hair cut short.  But this part, like most of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, lasts too long.  The entire film is basically just a series of mishaps between Molly & Johnny, trying to understand why they won't be accepted in polite society, and changing everything about themselves to get there.  It's not that different than The Beverly Hillbillies, which makes the Oscar nominations feel weird, though they aren't all bad.  The cinematography is oddly good, particularly in the singing scenes (in many ways it recalls some of the outdoor singing shots of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music), and the costumes & art direction are splendidly colorful and over-the-top (the grand staircase in the mansion is particularly gauche and features heavily into Molly's return from Europe).  But the music isn't strong, either in terms of sound or in terms of it being memorable (I saw it yesterday, and I can't remember one number from it), and Reynolds...she's not great.  Reynolds worked best in MGM musicals because she was spunky and you liked watching her fall in love.  But this film shows her limitations-she can't elevate a bad movie, and she swings for the rafters too much.  This very much feels in the vein of Pillow Talk and The Blind Side, where an actress who had charmed audiences (and the box office) for years gets her thank you from the Academy, even if it isn't earned.

There is one really weird part of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, though, and it's the complete lack of her time on the Titanic.  If you asked any modern audience member, the only thing they'd know about Molly Brown is her surviving the Titanic, and I'll be real-I suspect that would've been the case in 1964 as well.  Yet in the film's 135 minutes, just over two of those minutes take place during the Titanic sinking.  All you see is Reynolds walking the deck during the iceberg hit, one shot of the ship sinking, and Molly keeping everyone on the lifeboat alive.  It's such a tiny part it honestly feels like a joke...as if they ran out of money during production and didn't save anything for the most famous part of her life.  Reynolds is actively bad in the lifeboat scenes as well...trying to shame the women crying on the ship as their husbands are dying just a few hundred meters away.  It's such a strange scene, and worth noting if you're watching this movie because you're an amateur Titanic historian looking for more movies about the subject...because man is it weird & far shorter than it should've been in a movie that otherwise stretches too long.

OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.

OVP: Sound (2023)

OVP: Best Sound (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Ian Voigt, Erik Aadahl, Ethan van der Ryn, Tom Ozanich, & Dean Zupancic, The Creator

Steven S. Murrow, Richard King, Jason Ruder, Tom Ozanich, & Dean Zupancic, Maestro

Chris Munro, James H. Mather, Chris Burdon, & Mark Taylor, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

Willie Burton, Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo, & Kevin O'Connell, Oppenheimer

Tarn Willers & Johnnie Burn, The Zone of Interest

My Thoughts: I am still getting used to the concept of the sound categories being combined.  I don't like it (that's why in the My Ballot we are continuing to look at the categories separately), but it does makes things a bit simpler in grading these pictures.  In different years, some of these movies would've been a challenge to suss out the difference between mixing & editing, understanding what made one aspect a bit stronger than the other (cause quite frankly, as a non-filmmaker, there are movies where I can't tell if something is an effect or not).  But with them combined, we have it easier in just lumping them together-all the sounds count the same.

A good example of this would be Mission Impossible.  This film uses a number of different practical stunts (Cruise actually jumped off of a cliff while riding a motorcycle, which is insane & you have to be the level of Tom Cruise famous to be able to get a studio to take that kind of an insurance risk with their leading man), and when it comes to practical stunts, it is a combination of actual sounds and ones that are being manufactured after the effect to punctuate gunshots, punches, & explosions.  The film is strong in its fight scenes (particularly the one on the train), but I feel like it over-relies on the score, and it feels a bit generic after seven movies when it isn't getting its "this is the reason we made the movie" sorts of action sequences (again, like the train) brought out into the open.

The Zone of Interest is another film that, honestly, it's hard to tell the editing from the mixing, and you'd be forgiven for not realizing that the movie has both.  What you wouldn't be forgiven for is understanding how special this film's sound is.  Honestly, if you wanted to have a textbook definition of how sound can truly influence a film, this is it.  While Mica Levi's dramatic, electronic score elevates the movie in sequences, it's really in the silence, when we overhear people literally dying across the wall while the main family is displaying domesticity right in front of us, that we get the juxtaposition in Glazer's banality of evil paradox.  Brilliant stuff, and totally makes the movie.

We didn't get a musical nomination in 2023, which is usually one of the mainstays of this category, but we did get a musically-inspired film in Maestro.  I have been somewhat tough on Maestro throughout these proceedings (if you're a fan of the film, that's not going to get better the further along we go so brace yourself), but I am not blind (or in this case, deaf) to its stronger attributes, and one of those is its sound mixing.  The way that we hear a loud, almost cannon-fire look at Bernstein's compositions (think of the famous scene where Bradley Cooper allegedly spent years learning how to compose to get a few minutes of screen time), you understand so much of the character through the overpowering genius of his music.  This is well-balanced throughout the rest of the film, where we get conversation that feels tinkling, like in a Douglas Sirk picture.

Loud being good isn't the case for all films, though.  I have long had an issue with Christopher Nolan's pictures and their sound design, with some being very strong, but occasionally him having the worst of offenders in movies like Tenet, where there are stretches of dialogue when you literally can't hear the picture.  Oppenheimer isn't that bad, but I will own that the overbearing score breaks the sound-it's too loud, and it's too much.  It causes some of the bigger explosions to feel like they're playing second fiddle to a cymbal crash, and in a movie where the "big explosions" are important to what's happening in the movie (we need to understand the destruction to get why this has haunted Oppenheimer), this is a risky ball to drop.

The final nominee is The Creator, a movie that would've been a threat to win Best Sound Editing in a different era (I think 2023 is one of those years that the Sound categories split their winners).  The movie's reliance on a futuristic world where robots coexist alongside (and are seen as toxic to) humanity is one that needs to have a constant whir of sounds that are not there, and this works really well.  The Creator is not a strong movie, but it is one that looks & acts like a prestige Science Fiction thriller, and that includes its strong sound design.  You get distinctive aural cues for the robots, and despite none of that being in reality, you never doubt the visual effects are real.  That's in part due to the perfect synchronicity with the sound.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Cinema Audio Society (focusing on Sound Mixing) splits its victors between Live-Action and Animated, so for Live-Action we have Oppenheimer beating Barbie, Ferrari, Killers of the Flower Moon, & Maestro, while Animated had Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse victorious over Elemental, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, The Boy and the Heron, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.  The Golden Reel Awards (focusing on Sound Editing) also split between live-action and animated, with Oppenheimer (beating Ferrari, Gran Turismo, John Wick: Chapter 4, Napoleon, & The Killer) and Spider-Verse 2 (atop Elemental, Migration, & Mario) their winners.  The BAFTA Awards gave their statue to The Zone of Interest, here against Ferrari, Maestro, Mission Impossible, & Oppenheimer.  The Sound categories in 2023 have a shortlist (I always forget this because for years they didn't and also it's for some reason not on the Wikipedia page) and so we know that sixth place was either Barbie, Ferrari, The Killer, Killers of the Flower Moon or Napoleon...and I think the smart money would be on one of the two Best Picture nominees.  At the time I predicted Barbie (it has the musical elements that they tend to like), but Killers of the Flower Moon is a smart guess as well.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Like I said, we'll split out the categories between mixing and editing for my nominees, so we'll actually have seven films nominated for Sound in total.  One movie that will make both fields, though, and therefore would've had a guaranteed nomination in a combined category like Oscar's, is The Killer, which is a masterful look at how sound can inform the pacing of your film (also, all David Fincher films tend to sound good).

Oscar’s Choice: In maybe the classiest win of the night (and there were a lot of classy wins at the 96th Academy Awards), The Zone of Interest upset and got a victory over Oppenheimer, which was many people's presumed favorite.

My Choice: The only way you beat something like Oppenheimer for a gimme category like this is by being an all-timer, and that's what The Zone of Interest is-it's an extremely worthy first place.  Behind it, I debated between The Creator and Maestro, but ultimately picked the SciFi epic for second because I think it has the harder task and makes it more engrained into the movie.  Behind these three would be Mission Impossible, and then Oppenheimer.

Those are my choices-how about you?  I'm assuming anyone who has seen The Zone of Interest is giving it their vote...right?  Why do you think Oscar has moments of such discerning taste, and in other categories they just let the Best Picture winner stampede to the top?  And was it Barbie or Killers of the Flower Moon in sixth?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2023: Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Sound Mixing Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: The Nun's Story (1959)

Film: The Nun's Story (1959)

Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger, Mildred Dunnock

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress-Audrey Hepburn, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Audrey Hepburn: click here to learn more about Ms. Hepburn (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Like many women who wore the title of "America's Sweetheart" Audrey Hepburn's critical acclaim has been questioned through the years by some, claiming she was a "limited" actress.  This feels like an odd thing to point out for Hepburn, who more than almost any actress we're going to profile this year, received a lot of critical acclaim.  Hepburn was cited for five Oscars in her career, winning for Roman Holiday, and that didn't include her lauded work in My Fair Lady, which was widely-expected by many to be a spot for her to get a nomination.  She also was one of the first people to win an EGOT (an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, & Tony) and did so as a performer.  Today, we are going to discuss one of Hepburn's Oscar-nominated turns, the final one that I had yet to see, and one that I think shows the versatility of her acting, rather than calling it (as her critics have) "one-note": The Nun's Story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the life of Gaby, a young postulant who for most of the film is known as Sister Luke (Hepburn).  She has, before the start of the film, decided to devote herself to a life as a nun, something that we don't get a lot of insight into the rationale why, though we think it's to become a nurse in the Congo (there's a throwaway line about a boy she liked late in the film, and I rather liked that this might be a secondary reason for her, because it adds a depth to the film even if it might also be a touch antifeminist to assume she couldn't just want this for a career).  Of course, being a nun is not just about nursing, but instead also about devotion to God, and throughout the film we get to see Sister Luke struggle with a crisis-of-faith, trying to find a way to help those around her through her scientific skills, but also to get back to her devotion to the church, and wanting to show that she can be worthy of her new calling, and not just being a nurse.  As the film progresses, it becomes evident that she cannot, and in the final moments of the film, she leaves the convent forever.

The movie was cited for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it's worthy of most of them.  The film is wonderfully-structured, giving us a glimpse not only into the life of a woman trying to become a nun, but giving it two-dimensionally.  I have read that some (particularly composer Franz Waxman) were critical of the Catholic Church, but I'll be honest-I don't think the story gets that across.  If you want to debate the Church, you've got your evidence there-the constant critiquing of Sister Luke for having human impulses feels cruel in parts.  But there's also a spot for those who are sympathetic to the church, showing how becoming a nun isn't a calling for everyone, even for the most kindhearted of women (i.e. there's more to being a nun than being good).  I loved that approach, and honestly really liked this movie.  There are critiques to be had (I don't think that it gives us enough connection to those around Sister Luke for us to really understand why she ultimately gives up the church after sacrificing so much), but they're thin.  Zinnemann's approach, the film's lovely cinematography, and the way that it wordlessly adds depth to the ending by foregoing Waxman's score as Hepburn leaves the convent, rather than giving us a dramatic swell, is marvelous.  It's clear at that moment that Sister Luke is picking the only way out, but she's not sure if it's the right one, and the music not giving the audience any indication this is the correct path is really well-designed.

Hepburn's performance here is really stellar.  The cinematography & makeup work are helping her cause, to be fair.  I love the way we start to see the angelic Hepburn's eyes start to become sallow with the weight of the world on her, highlighted by the constant focus on her face (in many ways copying what cinematographer Arthur C. Miller did for Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette).  But Hepburn is also giving something extra to her work here.  Her internal struggles, the way that her inner-monologue never shuts off, particularly when we see that she can't speak to other people, is very reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, and it's very effective.  Hepburn shows here she might always look like a pixie, but she also was able to use that to create versatility.  She's up against actresses like Simone Signoret & Katharine Hepburn, generally considered to be "better" actresses than she is, but her performance honestly is more nuanced and stronger in the way it highlights the picture than either of those two more celebrated thespians.  Hepburn's critical reputation from some snobbish cinephiles as one-note is, well, wrong.

OVP: The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

Film: The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

Stars: James Stewart, June Allyson, Harry Morgan, Charles Drake, George Tobias

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Original Screenplay, Sound*, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on June Allyson: click here to learn more about Ms. Allyson (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In 1953, coming off of Remains to Be Seen, a crime musical that flopped badly at the box office, June Allyson was dropped from her contract with MGM.  This wasn't the end of June's career, though.  Allyson smartly made her first post-contract movie with her costar in the MGM hit The Stratton Story Jimmy Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story, which was a critical & commercial success (and our film today).  Allyson would reteam successfully with Stewart the following year in Strategic Air Command, and Alan Ladd in The McConnell Story (another war picture) the same year.  She'd even return to MGM for one last musical at the studio in The Opposite Sex (a musical remake of The Women that also has Joan Collins & Ann Sheridan) in 1956, but that would bomb badly, and by 1957 she'd be ready for a new chapter, which we'll get into next week.  But first, let's talk about one of the films that helped keep Allyson a leading woman throughout her late thirties, The Glenn Miller Story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a (somewhat) accurate depiction of the life of Glenn Miller.  Miller might not be super well-known to the general public today, but in 1954 if you asked "who is Glenn Miller?" they would've looked like you in the same way  people would look at you today if you asked "who is Rihanna?"  Miller was a wildly successful big band leader in the 1930 & 40's, and we see that in this film as Jimmy Stewart plays him from his unsuccessful beginnings, including his unusual courtship of his wife Helen (Allyson), to eventual success, recording such standards as "Moonlight Serenade" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo" which would become the first-ever certified gold record.  The film ends where Glenn Miller's life did, with his plane going down during World War II into the English Channel, his final resting place still unknown to this day.

The movie is a part of my least-favorite subgenre, the musician biopic, one that has been pounded into the ground in recent years thanks to the success of the film Bohemian Rhapsody (we've got an upcoming one about Amy Winehouse while a Bob Marley biopic is still playing in most theaters).  So color me as surprised that I loved this movie.  It helps that Glenn Miller is one of my favorite recording artists.  My friend Drew, after I told him I was cooking while listening to Glenn Miller the other day said "how old are you???" but there's something about Miller's orchestrations that feed my soul.  Every moment of actual music in this picture is heaven.

But it's honestly the film itself that makes it work (I didn't like Respect with Aretha Franklin and I love Aretha's music).  I think it's primarily because of the way the film is constructed.  We don't need Miller to struggle with fame or a drug addiction-his story feels refreshing, particularly since it's unique (how many music superstars have died for their country?), and because Stewart & Allyson have a lot of fun with it.  Their courtship is silly & delightful, even if they're both too old for these parts, and as the film progresses, they do a really good job of showing us how bittersweet this love story's ending is going to be, knowing that it will end too soon, but that Miller's music will live on with countless lovers in the decades that follow.  Stewart is excellent (I love the way he conducts, showing that he loves Helen in a way that's different than being in love with music, but when they connect, it fills his heart), but Allyson is strong too.  Allyson didn't get enough credit as an actress during her career, but she's very good here, and the last few minutes, when she goes on a facial journey listening to her husband's arrangements, a special song just for her (for the last time), is beautiful.  Really well done on her part.

The film won three Oscar nominations, and two of them are impossible to argue with; I wasn't as enamored with the screenplay just because it was sometimes confusing at the beginning as to what Helen exactly saw in Glenn, but that's only a quibble because there's an Oscar at stake as it's otherwise solid.  But the scoring is divine-all of the Glenn Miller musical choices, particularly "Moonlight Serenade" and the way they show its evolution, are spectacular.  And the sound...I honestly was surprised how well this went.  I'm not one of those "it's a musical-it must have good sound!" people primarily because it downplays how great it can sound when you get it right-the sound here is rich, full, and captures all of the melancholy grandeur of Miller's music.  The scene where he plays while the enemy planes are dropping bombs near a still-enraptured audience...death be damned if the music is that enchanting.  What a terrific choice for an Oscar win.

OVP: Sound Mixing (2000)

OVP: Best Sound (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Randy Thom, Tom Johnson, Dennis Sands, & William B. Kaplan, Cast Away

Scott Millan, Bob Beemer, & Ken Weston, Gladiator

Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell, & Lee Orloff, The Patriot

John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, David Campbell, & Keith A. Wester, The Perfect Storm

Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker, Rick Kline, & Ivan Sharrock, U-571

My Thoughts: Maren Morris sings a song with the lyrics "why don't you just meet me in the middle" which is a phrase that has an actual meaning (that you need to compromise with people), but is something I sing to myself personally whenever I get to a category like this field.  Sound Mixing in 2000 is a series of "pretty good" with barely enough "that's great" nominees.  As you're going to see in our discussion today, a lot of it is the films doing 1-2 things well, but that ultimately being the only reason for their inclusion.  This isn't necessarily Oscar's fault (2000, as we've discussed, wasn't a super impressive film year, particularly when it came to the action & musical bread-and-butter we'd usually see in this category), but it also makes ranking these films really challenging because they're all on the same page.

The best example of this is The Perfect Storm, a movie that does one thing notably: water.  The film is best known for being one of the earliest films to blend CGI and practical effects involving water, which is really challenging to pull off (and it does-the visual effects in this movie are super well-done), but that's the only thing that it does well.  I want a sound design to be less one-note, especially when it comes to mixing, and the dialogue scenes or the other sequences don't have the same level of cache.  You either need to do everything perfectly or you need to have true standout mixing details in your key scenes...this doesn't do the former, and while it does do some of the latter, it feels more like an editing achievement.

The same can be said for Gladiator.  This is a movie that during its epic battle scenes (the ones in the arena) you hear every corner, every sound, and it comes together marvelously.  But the other sequences, it just doesn't feel authentic.  I don't feel like I'm being transported into Ancient Rome.  We're coming to the point soon (as we go back in the OVP) where sound design was harder (the technology & cameras weren't there), but given other films of 2000 were able to achieve something really special & feel authentic to these worlds, I wanted to hear that in Gladiator.

The Patriot does this somewhat better.  It helps that it has the best film score of these five, so we have John Williams aiding in making this feel like a world onto itself, something that recalls a colonial series of villages & rebellions, rather than a reconstruction of these sets with 20th Century actors.  I also love the roaring cannons & battle sequences, which are harsh but also cinematic (you can tell Mel Gibson just starred in this and didn't direct it given the battle scenes are focused on adventure & not intestines).  I don't think it's bringing it to a great level, but it is decent work, and incorporates its score the best.

Cast Away also does well with its score, and I think might have the best balance of the films here.  You have really standout sequences, particularly those with Tom Hanks at sea.  The famous scene where he says goodbye to Wilson the Volleyball is really well done because it gives you competing sounds (the water, the music, Tom Hanks' yells), while other sequences use quiet ingeniously.  The whale scene (which terrified me the first time I saw this) is so silent except the waves, which works perfectly as the entire audience is holding their collective breaths during it, adding to the silence.  This is a movie that clearly remembered the best way to see a movie is on the big screen.

Our final nominee is U-571, which I'll be honest, feels more like an editing achievement than a mixing one.  Much of the noise here comes from the claustrophobia of the ship, and the attacks & gadgets that are the bread-and-butter of a submarine film.  The score isn't a big calling card, though, and I don't think we get anything unique from how it's used.  I also think some of the dialogue doesn't work as well against the battles; I hate when "it's too loud to hear" is an excuse to not hear dialogue-I always want to hear the actors, and there are ways to make it seem like the characters can't hear each other but the audience can without sacrificing realism.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Cinema Audio Society was not yet splitting its awards between Animated & Live-Action in 2000, so we get a combined category (though it's worth noting that no animated films made it into the lineup).  The Cinema Audio Society, though, adds nothing to the conversation as they picked the exact same lineup as Oscar (with Gladiator winning), while BAFTA gave the top prize to Almost Famous (I love when BAFTA is off doing its own thing), against Billy Elliot, Crouching Tiger, Gladiator, and The Perfect Storm.  I think the clear sixth place is Crouching Tiger, a film that did well virtually everywhere else, and feels like it should've been cited here.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I've said Crouching Tiger so often, we'll go a different direction.  In a year with very few musicals, you'd be hard-pressed to find a film with the kind of perfect musical influence as O Brother, Where Art Thou.  I'm in the middle on the film's quality overall, but the music is spectacular, and even lip-syncing it is designed to make you think George Clooney can really sing.

Oscar’s Choice: Deprived of its chief competition in most categories (Crouching Tiger), this was a slam dunk win for Gladiator.

My Choice: The only one of these that will be showing up in my personal awards is Cast Away, and so I'll happily give it the statue considering how well it does with the full picture of sound design for the film.  Behind it (in order) are The Patriot, The Perfect Storm, Gladiator, and U-571.

Those are my choices-how about you?  Do you want to battle it out with Oscar & Gladiator, or will you set sail with myself & Cast Away?  Am I crazy thinking this is all relatively good nominees...but only one great one?  And why do you think Oscar skipped Crouching Tiger?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2000: Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

Past Best Sound Mixing Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: A Star is Born (1976)

Film: A Star is Born (1976)

Stars: Barbra Streisand, Kris Kristofferson, Gary Busey

Director: Frank Pierson

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Original Song-"Evergreen," Cinematography, Scoring, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Kris Kristofferson: click here to learn more about Mr. Kristofferson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Few films live in such storied annals as A Star is Born, a film that has been told 4-5 times depending on how you handle What Price Hollywood?.  It is the quintessential Hollywood story, the public name-check when we talk about the entertainment industry.  But specific to our film today, few productions have the kinds of legendary tale as that which comes from the 1976 A Star is Born, one of the most infamous film shoots in movie history.  Written by the journalist It Couple of the 1970's (John Gregory Dunne & Joan Didion), the shoot involved pretty much everyone hating each other.  Kris Kristofferson, then a huge star, hadn't been the first choice for the film (Streisand wanted Elvis Presley, who honestly would've been an interesting choice had that come about even though Kristofferson is the better actor of the two), and by the end of the production loathed both his leading lady and director Frank Pierson.  You've got Barbra Streisand having an affair with colorful 1970's mega-producer Jon Peters (who had just gotten a divorce from Lesley Ann Warren), and using her position as the most powerful person on the set to run roughshod over director Pierson, including getting final cut which may explain how the ending ends with a seven-minute long shot of Streisand.  A production where all of the cast isn't speaking (except the ones who are fucking each other), by the end of it can sometimes become a grand situation if the movie is good (look at Hell's Angels, now considered Howard Hughes' finest movie), but if it sucks, it becomes a Don't Worry Darling-style fiasco.  And A Star is Born sucks.

(Spoilers Ahead) This story is as engrained in Hollywood lore as you can get, so I don't know that I need a spoiler alert, but for those of you somehow unfamiliar, this is the story of John Norman Howard (Kristofferson), a washed-up rock star, who is more familiar with the bottle than the Billboard charts by the time the movie opens.  He meets, at a bar, a young singer named Esther Hoffman (Streisand), who is clearly a talent, and becomes smitten with her.  Eventually, he's producing one of her albums, and she's clearly headed to the top of the charts, and they even get married.  But there's a problem-John's demons are not only still there, but they're exacerbated by his jealousy over his wife's success, and she wants him to join in on it, rather than letting him slip into the background or not fight for what he's got.  In the end, this is the marriage (and John's) undoing, as he dies in a drunk driving accident, though unlike some of the other movies, it's not entirely clear that this is intentional or not.  Esther is now alone, but a fully-transcendent star, one who understands that she'll forever be linked with the man who fell before her.

This has been told very well (Judy Garland, Constance Bennett), solidly (Janet Gaynor), and poorly (Lady Gaga) before.  But this is the worst of the versions, because even with the others, specifically 2018's (I don't think Lady Gaga has proven capable of being a dramatic actress, and I think she's bad in the movie when she's not singing, but she gets coverage because Bradley Cooper is good and also because Gaga is a strong singer who gets one truly fantastic scene with "Shallow") there was something crackling between the two lead actors.  Gaga & Cooper, March & Gaynor, and especially Mason & Garland...there's heat.  But this film has zilch sexual chemistry between Streisand & Kristofferson, to the point where you genuinely don't understand why he fell for her.  This makes the film over-long, boring, and honestly...the leads give bad performances, particularly Streisand, who plays Esther less as an organic character onscreen and more as Barbra Streisand as herself.  Nothing about this works; honestly, I read a comment about how this feels an hour longer than the Garland version even though it's much shorter, and that summarizes my feelings exactly.

The film won four Oscar nominations, but it only earned one of them.  The sound is fine, but not spectacular (the concert scenes in Nashville a year earlier did a much better job of giving you a sense of talking at a performance, and of framing the musical numbers), and the cinematography is a similar situation, needlessly glossy & framed in a way that stops it from being romantic or creative.  The nomination for Best Scoring makes sense given the sales on the soundtrack were insane (I'm surprised it didn't win), but with one exception, none of the songs are either any good or performed organically-unlike Gaga's A Star is Born (where Gaga as a songwriter wrote plausible hits), it's not clear why the public latched onto either John or Esther as performers...save for "Evergreen."  One of the most iconic numbers of Streisand's discography, the song becomes the love theme for the movie, and while the movie's romantic overtones are never believable, lost in a song "as soft as an easy chair" you'd be forgiven for assuming this is a classic (because "Evergreen" is).