... Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland -- and un-nominated co-conspirator, Carter Burwell -- for sound in "No Country for Old Men"! (See below.)
Meanwhile, I'm happy to see several mildly surprising nominations: Viggo Mortensen for "Eastern Promises"; Saoirse Ronan for "Atonement"; Hal Holbrook for "Into the Wild"; "Persepolis" for animated feature. No surprise, and absolutely proper: Roger Deakins for shooting both "No Country for Old Men" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (though I hope they don't cancel each other out). But nothing for "Zodiac"? At the very least it should have received a nomination for its amazing visual effects. But unless you've seen the Director's Cut DVD (or some Digital Domain clips on YouTube) you probably wouldn't have known they were effects. That's how good they are.
Looking at the odds, "Atonement" is an unlikely best picture because its director (Joe Wright) wasn't nominated. "Michael Clayton" and "Juno" lack an editing nomination, which (statistically speaking) is are crucial to winning the top prize. On the other hand, "Michael Clayton" is honored in three acting categories, for George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton -- and guess which branch of the Academy is the biggest? "No Country for Old Men" didn't claim a lead acting slot, perhaps because it's an ensemble piece. If you go strictly by statistically significant nominations, only "There Will Be Blood" has 'em all -- an old-fashioned Hollywood epic built around a big performance (by a previous Oscar winner). But will its unremittingly bleak nihilism (and the bizarre ending that alienated even some admirers) prove too bitter for Academy voters? I dunno.
I just want to take a moment here to acknowledge my favorite nomination. (This is where I congratulate myself on my foresight -- hey, I predicted Tom Wilkinson, too -- even though I'm a lousy Oscar guesser.) Back in September when I first saw "No Country for Old Men" in September, I wrote:
A moment here to celebrate the genius of one of the greatest talents in motion pictures, supervising sound editor Skip Lievsay, who has worked with the Coens (and Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese and others) since way back before the mosquito buzzing and peeling wallpaper of "Barton Fink." Since the bug zapper in "Blood Simple," in fact. Also, composer Carter Burwell ("Psycho III"!) has been associated with the Coens for just as long. He's credited with the music in "No Country," too, but it's to his merit that I don't even recall any music in the picture -- except for one memorably Coen-esque appearance by a mariachi band.And among the nominees for Best Sound Editing are: Skip Lievsay (also for Sound Mixing), Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland. (Of course, Burwell's score wasn't nominated -- way too subtle.) Incredibly, Lievsay ("Do the Right Thing," "Last Temptation of Christ," "Silence of the Lambs," "GoodFellas," "City of Hope," "Fargo," "The New World") has never before been nominated for an Academy Award. This, in my view, has been one of the most egregious oversights in Oscar history.
As I've noted before, the attention to sound in the Coens' films gives them a vivid dimension that most films don't begin to explore. And, in "NCFOM," the music and the sound design are one. Earlier month, Dennis Lim wrote a piece on Lievsay, Burwell and colleagues for the New York Times that's one of the best "awards season" pieces I've ever read ("Exploiting Sound, Exploring Silence"):
What is unusual about “No Country for Old Men” is not simply the level of audio detail but that it is a critical part of the storytelling. Skip Lievsay, the sound editor who has worked with the Coen brothers since their first feature, “Blood Simple” (1984), called “No Country” “quite a remarkable experiment” from a sonic standpoint. “Suspense thrillers in Hollywood are traditionally done almost entirely with music,” he said. “The idea here was to remove the safety net that lets the audience feel like they know what’s going to happen. I think it makes the movie much more suspenseful. You’re not guided by the score and so you lose that comfort zone.” [...]Score one for the sound artists.That decision was made with the help of Carter Burwell, the Coens’ regular composer, who has also been part of their stable since “Blood Simple.” (Mr. Lievsay introduced him to the Coens.) “My first suggestion was that if there’s music, it should somehow emanate from the landscape,” Mr. Burwell said. He tried a few “abstract musical sounds, just the harmonics of a violin or some percussive sounds,” but found that even these small touches “destroyed the tension that came from the quiet.”
Like film editing, film sound remains a somewhat misunderstood craft, partly because at its best it tends to be imperceptible. “The better we do our job, the less people realize what’s going on,” Mr. Lievsay said. “I think a lot of people think the sound just comes out of the camera.”
(PS: Great line from Mix magazine: "The strongest influence Skip has had on me isn't how to marry a dog bark with a chin sock, but how to fish with a fly.")
29 Comments
Year after year we endure complaints in the gossip about all the "boring" technical awards. Even the most dedicated cinephiles don't always notice the many other artists behind the auteurs (I'm no exception). Thanks to you and Mr. Lim for giving Lievsay the acclaim he deserves.
Come to think of it, the sound in Goodfellas was phenomenal. How wonderful to have another rooting interest on Oscar night, assuming we have an Oscar night.
I was just kinda surprised Before the Devil Knows Your Dead and The Simpsons didn't get anything. Come on, wasn't that Simpsons movie excellent?
But where oh where was Harris Savides for Zodiac?
Jim, having just seen NCFOM for the fourth time yesterday, and in a technically spectacular theater, Lievsay's contributions are fresh on my mind, and in my ears too, and I was very happy to see him nominated. Right now I'm thinking of that incredible scene in the Eagle Pass Hotel when Moss sits on his bed. All is quiet, except for the very subtle sound of an elevator motor, which alerts Moss and prompts him to call the front desk. No other sound in the room, so we can hear the line ring, followed so faintly by the bell of the phone ringing downstairs at the bellman's desk... who does not answer after four rings. Moss hangs up and sits on the bed, and after a few more beats of unbearable silence, we hear the faint beeping of that transponder tracking device. Moss hits the lights. Nothing but silence again, until a faint scraping sound, a light bulb being unscrewed from its socket. The light leaking from the hallway underneath Moss's door goes dark. No sound. And then the door lock slams into Moss's chest and hell breaks loose.
Bravo. A wise friend of mine was listening to me talking about the Oscars this morning. "Roger Deakins did very well for himself this morning," I said, to which he replied, "He did well for himself when he shot those movies." Amen, and who cares if he or Lievsay wins. Sure, it'd be great, but no matter what we've still got the films-- those images, those sounds. Great post, Jim.
And R.I.P. Heath Ledger too. A tragic loss, to be sure, but my heart goes out to his ex-wife and beautiful child.
Is Skip Livesay your twin brother?
JE: I wondered that, too. Today's the first time I've ever seen a picture of him.
RE: Burwell's score - too subtle? There wasn't a score, except over the closing credits. There was no music in the actual film, besides some incidental music (did Burwell write the mariachi band music? I somehow doubt it). Can't believe Lievsay has never been nominated before.
JE: I thought there was no score, either, but there is. Just a few ominous chords underscoring certain moments, like the encounter at the gas station. It's so subtle you don't consciously register it, but it thickens the atmosphere. That's what I mean by it being part of the sound design.
I thought there was a scene where there was music. When Chigurh shoots a crow off a bridge, the vibration of the bridge almost sounded like a musical note to me.
All of the nominees that "mildly surprised" you were in fact widely predicted and had strong precent earlier this awards season, i.e. SAGs, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, etc. The sound from NCFOM was a gimme for Oscars, so I would hardly call it the "best nomination." In my mind, "best" means "most surprisingly inspired." I know that you consider NCFOM to be the best of the year, but you don't consider its nominations in the top categories to be the "best" simply because you agree with them, do you?
As far as the ending for TWBB goes, it's over-the-top, sure, but completely appropriate and absolutely the best and only way that the movie should've ended. It's a multi-layered statement on the implications of power when crossed with desperate misanthropy. Plainview does what he does precisely because he's been cut off from the world, locked in his estate with little else to do. And so his madness consumes him in his endless idle time. It's vaguely reminiscent of Hitler's final days in his bunker, moving non-existent troops on his map, though with more violent consequences (which reminds me, Bruno Ganz's performance in Downfall was also big, but wholly appropriate to the character, as is Day-Lewis's take on Plainview).
In that way, I actually see the movie as humanistic (in an upside-down sense) rather than nihilistic. Plainview's downfall was the culmination of everything bad about his character, which overwhelmed the deeply conflicted human needs just below the surface. He did long for human relationships like family and companions, but his simultaneous distaste for human weakness and reliance upon others prevented him from making deep, meaningful attachments to anybody. In the end, he could only go crazy (he's actually going crazy WAY before the last reel). Thus, Plainview is a grandly tragic figure, if not a completely sympathetic one.
The movie arrives at conclusions akin to those of Penn's Into the Wild, though from completely the opposite angle. While Penn chose to explicitly state and underline the major lesson from McCandless's life in the most sentimental fashion, Anderson chose the shock-and-awe method, which I find to be far more effective (in its visceral impact), sophisticated, and nuanced. I don't know where this idea of "nihilism" in TWBB comes from, especially if nihilism is to be defined as, "Nothing you do will ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things." The movie simply doesn't address that idea in any clear, direct manner.
On the other hand, NCFOM is clearly nihilistic. It's summarized in the oft-quoted tagline, "You can't stop what's coming." Ed Tom's resignation is a reflection of that idea. His poetic monologue at the end is open to interpretation. You think that it's a statement of hope, but even so, it's a hope within a context of cruel, ruthless fate. I see the statement as coming to terms with bleak nihilism, if not actually embracing it.
By the way, the visual effects branch of the Academy apparently doesn't think highly of Zodiac's effects at all. It failed to make the longlist of seven, which had been released between the time that the 15 eligible contenders and the final nominations were announced. I'm surprised to see The Golden Compass there, since it's been such a box office bomb, and its effects have been often described as plastic or artificial-looking.
Fei: It seems you've been following the Oscars more closely, and know a lot more about the Academy's predilections, than I.
As for NCFOM and TWBB: Acceptance of the inevitability of death (Ellis: "You can't stop what's comin'") seems to me quite different from homicidal/suicidal rage against god and the universe (Plainview: "I'm finished"). I don't see Ed Tom's dream as fatalistic -- it's McCarthy's "The Road" in miniature. But some see no hope in that, so I guess it's arguable. As I'm writing in another post just now, TWBB appears to me as a narrative/philosophical/existential dead end; whereas NCFOM imparts a kind of wisdom born of experience.
I find it absurd that Johnny Greenwood's fantastic score for 'There Will Be Blood' was disqualified for containing pre-existing themes. Do you have any information on this? I'm not sure what the rule is. I thought Greenwood's work was completely unique; tense, scare, and ominous. Unlike anything I've heard in a long time.
Jim, is it possible for you to mention There Will Be Blood without taking a jab at it? Just once? A lot of people like that movie and you know it. How about trying to keep the self-righteous contrarianism at bay just long enough to objectively discuss the film's chances of winning at the ceremony? Would that be so hard?
Interesting Oscar Nomination factoid:
With Javier Bardem's nomination for Supporting Actor for No Country for Old Men, Kate Hudson is now the only nominee for 2000 to have only one nomination.
Russell Crowe: 3 (1 win)
Javier Bardem: 2
Tom Hanks: 5 (2 wins)
Ed Harris: 4
Geoffrey Rush: 3 (1 win)
Julia Roberts: 3 (1 win)
Juliette Binoche: 2 (1 win)
Joan Allen: 3
Ellen Burstyn: 6 (1 win)
Laura Linney 3
Benicio Del Toro: 2 (1 win)
Jeff Bridges: 4
Albert Finney: 5
Joaquin Phoenix: 2
Willem Dafoe: 2
Marcia Gay Harden: 2 (1 win)
Kate Hudson: 1
Frances McDormand: 4 (1 win)
Julie Walters: 2
Judi Dench: 1 (1 win)
There were several films from this past year that lived without a traditional score... "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days", "Cloverfield"...I don't even recall one from "Michael Clayton", until the end I seem to recall "The Mist" lacked a score. And each time the sound effects and sense of quiet dread filled the space quite nicely, and made the films almost more intense and unnerving due to the lack of strings and trumpets screaming at you to be scared.
I'm so happy that "Persepolis" made it on the list of nominess somehow. I was so upset that it didn't make the Best Foreign Film cut. Stupid Academy.
I'm also very happy to see Laura Linney in the mix.
"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" gets nothing??!! Why?
If "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" wins something I'll burn the Academy Awards to the ground.
I didn't like Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher, and I didn't care for him as Bill the Butcher Goes A' Drillin', but he's obviously a mortal lock to win. While there's virtually nothing I like or even respect about the Oscars, the one category where they invariably pick one of my least favorites (not just of the nominees, but of the year in film)is in the Best Actor category. They particularly have an eye for awarding a good actor for one of his most disappointing roles (Forest Whittaker, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Russel Crowe, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Jack Nicholson for As Good as It Gets, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.)
The last decade+ of Best Actor awards reads as a list of the most grating performances I have had to suffer through during that time: Kevin Spacey for the film that shall not be named, Geoffrey Rush's unbearable turn in Shine, Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, Anthony Hopkins hamming it up in Silence of the Lambs, wow... I'm clicking all the way back to the 80s and it's like one kidney punch after another. Adrien Brody is the only real exception of the lot.
I'm astonished by the many nominations of Michael Clayton (not complaining though). I thought it was way too subtle and (deceptively?) conventional for awards. But I guess Gilroy and Clooney have lots of friends in the business. Yay for Wilkinson (as a person peripherally associated with mental health care, I think his portrayal of bipolar disorder is one of the few believable performances of madness).
Although I feel rather ambivalent about There Will Be Blood (rampant talent and passions in need of some restraint), its soundtrack is the best I have heard in a very long time. Atonement's soundtrack, on the other hand, is boring and lame.
Boo for omitting The Simpsons. Indeed Hollywood has no family values.
Day-Lewis and Bardem are almost certain to win actors awards, but my favorite is Philip Hoffman -- extraordinary range and precision and subtlety in all three movies he did (Before the Devil ..., The Savages, Charlie Wilson's War). He is truly an actors' actor (and might I say, handsome? :)
Here's a question - a real one - I hope someone can answer me satisfactorily:
Why is Cate Blanchett nominated as supporting actress for her Bob Dylan portrayal?
TWBB SPOILERs...
Gotta say that I loved the ending of TWBB. I thought it had one of the best closing lines I've ever heard in a movie. "I'm finished!" It was fittingly absurd and can be read so many ways. My friend and I immediately rattled off about 10 possibilities from that line that alternately made us laugh out loud and cringe.
What's "finished"?
Plainview's career
Plainview's dinner
his game of bowling
their conversation
the crushing of his enemies
the bludgeoning
the scene
the film
I thought it was fitting that Plainview would get the absolute last word on his life. In my opinion, the line, and the brutal action leading up to it, breaks the fourth wall to speak to the director and the audience directly - it was as if the bludgeoning and the line were a warning to everyone that only Daniel Plainview should have anything to say about Daniel Plainview. The film went to such a dark place so quickly it was as if Plainview ripped it out of the hands of PT Anderson and took over control of it.
What, no praise for the big nomination of Norbit? The scandal!
As to the musical score questions: For musical score there used to be a rule that you couldn't use any work you had previously composed in a new piece. In 1972 this resulted in Nina Rota being disqualified for The Godfather and led to Charlie Chaplin winning for a score he had done twenty years prior for Limelight because it had just been released in the States. They changed the release rule after this to ineligibility after two years from initial release outside the states (but it's a nebulous rule) and said you could use previous music in your score. So... in 1974 Carmine Coppola used previous music composed for The Godfather (by Nina Rota) along with his own and that was allowed because he was incorporating a theme from the connected film's work, and he won along with Rota who was no longer a sinner in the Academy's eyes. Now the rule is you can use your own new and previous work but you cannot use adapted work (like Brahms) although the understanding was that the adapted work would not be considered a part of the original score and thus not infringe on any rules. In other words, it's understood that a composer may put together a score and the movie may also have other music and popular songs on the soundtrack but we all know the song on the car radio doesn't count.
Here are the relevant rules (editing out the stuff that doesn't apply here):
1. The work must be specifically created for the eligible feature-length motion picture.
4. The work must be recorded for use in the film prior to any other usage including public performance or exploitation through any of the media whatsoever.
5. Only the principal composer(s) or song writer(s) responsible for the conception and execution of the work as a whole shall be eligible for an award. This expressly excludes from eligibility all of the following:
(a) supervisors
(b) partial contributors (e.g., any writer not responsible for the over-all design of the work)
(c) contributors working on speculation
(d) scores diluted by the use of themes tracked or other pre-existing music
(e) scores diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs
(f) scores assembled from the music of more than one composer.
Clearly The Godfather Part II violated both Rule no. 4 and its addendum f, as it had more than one composer.
So what's all this mean? It means the Academy is full of crap and picks and chooses who violates eligibility requirements and who doesn't. Somebody didn't want J. Greenwood nominated and pulled a fast one.
Wait a minute... Jim - You're not on the eligibility committee are you? :)
Dierk - You emphasized supporting so I suppose you're asking why wasn't she nominated for lead. I would assume that even though she is the lead in her segment she is supporting her fellow actors and they her with their small roles that make up the whole. Kind of like The Right Stuff. No one in that movie has the lead, they are all supporting, supporting each other. The group of characters themselves are the lead and the actors within the group are supporting.
I don't know if that's the right answer but that's how I've always interpreted ensemble casts.
Thanks, Jonathan! Actually, I appreciated the score a lot more the second time. It's still intrusive and dissonant (that's the whole idea!) but I found it truly distracting/distancing in only a few places this time.
I think it was worthy of a nomination. I just don't understand why it took the Academy so long to rule that it wasn't eligible.
haggie: That's the best account of the ending of TWBB that I've seen! I don't see where else this particular movie could have gone. Seems to me the whole thing has been heading directly for that moment, with all the implications you describe.
I realize I have been scandalously unattentive to sound. If asked, I would have assumed the Coens were as meticulous about that aspect as all others. I certainly come out of their films feeling that they were special in ways that escaped my conscious mind but I can't say I really noticed myself noticing....Then I read Dennis Cozzalio's re-enactment and got chills. Yes, I remember that scene in every fiber of my being. And then I started remembering "Rear Window" and "Jaws"...Time to up the attention level on a regular basis.
Good call on Hoffman (P.S., not Rainman), Jun. I would have been very pleased to see him get three nominations. Would that have been a first? I was disappointed with two of the films (exception: The Savages) but was absolutely riveted whenever he was on screen. And I fully agree with you on, "Michael Clayton", too, which was maybe less ground-breaking than some of the other top nominations, but did everything it set out to do beautifully.
My least favorite nom. was for the "Lars" screenplay. I didn't believe a moment of it. In fact, for my money, a lot of the charges aimed at "Juno" would be more aptly applied to "Lars". Not the dialogue, maybe. Just the whole silly story.
Yes, Jonathan, my question was about the 'supporting' category, not her achievements in the movie.
While I can easily share your view that ensemble pieces do not have a lead, the Academy regularly goes against this obvious notion - they always find a lead actor/actress. In the case of the Bob Dylan biopic it seems a bit drastic to find one of the actors depicting the main character [in the best of cases: all] being relegated to supporting actress.
I really wonder what the actual guidelines of the Academy are here. Could it be they like costume drama so much they wanted Elisabeth among the nominees but couldn't find anything but the lead halway worthy? Thus getting into the problem to have one actress being nominated two times in the same category. And to avoid this they just made Mrs Blanchett's Dylan interpretation a supporting act?
The Academy totally baffles me with this one.
Haggie, Jim,
I agree that TWBB couldn't have gone any place else - it's where you expect it to go from the title. I just wish it didn't come so easily when it did and that it meant a little more while it was happening. Even nothing can mean something, and this just meant nothing. Madness can have a point other than showing madness.
Dierk - Here are the actual guidelines. In case you're thinking I'm a freakish Oscar geek well... okay I am but I also just did a piece a couple of weeks ago on the 72 musical score fiasco and then the 44 Barry Fitzgerald double nod for the same performance so it's fresh in my head. After Barry got nominated for the same performance in both categories they came up with new guidelines as follows:
The determination as to whether a role is a lead or support shall be made individually by members of the branch at the time of balloting.
4. In the event that the performance receives the numbers of votes required to be nominated in both categories simultaneously, the achievement shall only be placed on the ballot in that category in which it receives the greater percentage of the total votes.
So as you can see there is no strict guideline for Supporting versus Lead. It's up to the individual voter who they think should be nominated for what when they cast their ballot. So people simply voted for Cate for supporting over lead. Many may have voted for her as lead instead but since they go with the most votes, it's clear more members voted for her for supporting.
Many thanks, Jonathan!
There aren't too many surprises in this year's nominations. I am sad however that Steve Zahn was overlooked for his amazing heartbreaking performance in Herzog's film Rescue Dawn. Probably because no one saw it. And thanks for making us aware of the sound guys - the unsung heroes of what we always consider a strictly visual medium. I was blown away by the sound in No Country for Old Men. We need more films without music tracks once in a while so we can hear what else is going on in those quiet moments.
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