Much as I admire his spunk, I think Awards Daily contributor Ryan Adams might be getting ahead of himself with his Oscar hopes for “The Dark Knight.”
In a recent post, he labels the categories of Best Makeup, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Supporting Actor and Best Visual Effects as “virtual certainties.” The other categories mentioned he feels are Oscar-worthy enough and have a good shot as well.
Best Visual Effects isn’t going to happen. This branch abandoned practical effects considerations long ago. The makeup, meanwhile, could find some trouble from aging and transformative efforts later in the season, so I wouldn’t call it a sure thing either.
We can all, I think, assume that Heath Ledger is on his way to a nod, and, indeed, the sound work in the film is top notch and worthy of serious consideration. The rest…nah. In fact, I think the most hastily over-predicted category for this film so far has been Best Art Direction, where Nathan Crowely scored at the BAFTAs in 2005 for “Batman Begins.”
There aren’t a lot of manufactured sets here. All the stuff that looks like a creation was even, for the most part, a practical set. London’s Battersea Power Station really shows up well when used in the film, for instance, and looks like a manifestation. But it’s not.
Lee Smith’s film editing is certainly a possibility, as he took things up a notch (to say the least) in this effort, but James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer will not be eligible for their brillaint score because of that pesky rule Rule 16b.
(By the way, speaking of the boys, anyone else just LOVE that creepy two-note string theme for the Joker that is a clever inversion of the Batman theme?)
I would, however, call Wally Pfister’s work behind the camera this film’s closest thing to a lock. The lensers have tons of respect for this guy (I’d say his nod in 2005 was a surprise) and given the technological steps taken here with the IMAX technology — the sheer balls of lugging those cameras around for these action sequences — I’d say he’s in.
And of course — I’ve always felt Christopher Nolan has a play here. But I’m not willing to go there. Yet.
Just my two cents.