The nominations for the 58th Annual CAS Awards dropped in January, and they may provide our strongest indication of how the Oscar nomination race is shaping. Last year, all five Best Sound nominees nabbed a nomination from the Cinema Audio Society, so that bodes well for Dune, No Time to Die, The Power of the Dog, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and West Side Story.
Given it’s only the second year of the newly merged Best Sound category, it’s hard to know if the Academy will go 5/5 in matching CAS. CAS only honours sound mixing, whereas the Academy now seeks to reward both sound mixing and editing. That’s why we also need to look at the nominations for the Motion Picture Sound Editors’ Golden Reel Awards.
Dune and No Time to Die scored multiple nods from the MPSE, so let’s presume they’re our two frontrunners for an Oscar nomination. West Side Story is honoured by both CAS and MPSE and seems to be fairly secure in the top five too. That leaves the final two spots open to multiple possibilities.
While Belfast hardly features the most bombastic sound editing and mixing, it’s the Best Picture frontrunner and could just sweep a bunch of technical nominations along the way. That fifth spot might go to Last Night in Soho or The Power of the Dog, but Spider-Man: No Way Home is hard to ignore right now. I’m also tempted to predict a surprise for A Quiet Place: Part II, so don’t be shocked if my final prediction changes before Tuesday.
BEST SOUND PREDICTIONS:
1. Dune (Warner Bros.)
2. No Time to Die (Universal Pictures)
3. West Side Story (20th Century Studios)
4. Belfast (Focus Features)
5. Spider-Man: No Way Home (Sony Pictures)
IN CONTENTION
Last Night in Soho (Universal Pictures)
The Matrix Resurrections (Warner Bros.)
The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
A Quiet Place Part II (Paramount Pictures)
tick, tick…BOOM! (Netflix)
