Realistically, I'm not so sure that the received wisdom that Slumdog will "sweep" will carry over to the sound awards (and it certainly can't sweep the four acting awards). It's possible of course, and I've seen it happen in years past; that's attributable I believe to the huge percentage of the Academy being made up of actors who simply have no understanding of or appreciation for the sound end of things. But don't count out TDK or Wanted or Wall-E; the studios have at least made some effort to push for sound awards, and reminder ads in the trades probably do have some impact.

And if Slumdog takes Sound Editing and/or Mixing, then so what? It's hardly the end of the world. Slumdog's a damn fine piece of work, far harder to have achieved than you likely can appreciate unless you have the thirty years of experience I have, Burtt already has a shelf full of Oscar recognition, and Ben is getting a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Motion Picture Sound Editors honorary group (the sound editing equivalent of the American Society of Cinematographers) on Feb 21st, which is no small honor within the sound community.

I think Ben. Button should win for Sound Mixing. It was incredible
Wall-E was good too as with TDK.
My guess is it will go to slumdog…

The supervising sound editor of TDK has one for MASTER & COMMANDER. The other sound editing nominees have none. The re-recording mixers of WANTED have a load of past nominations, and one has two Oscars. One of the re-recording mixers of BUTTON has two wins also, but his mix partner who handled the sound effects, and who also supervised the entire brilliant sound job, has none, and he's widely admired in the sound community for the inventiveness of his body of work, all for David Fincher. The TDK mixers have never won, and that was a very challenging mix. The SLUMDOG folks are all new to the Oscar party.

I guess you can tell I take prior wins into account when facing my ballot. I like to see the grace of Oscar spread around. Will I reveal here how I decide to vote? Sorry, Academy rules are strict about that – I really can't.

BTW – Brad's explanation of what the Sound Editing and Sound Mixing categories are about is basically correct. Suffice it to say that the editors are responsible for providing everything that you end up hearing in the mix; this can run to literally hundreds of tracks and often requires a huge amount of fresh recording of sound effects, then redesigning them to fit what we see on screen. But the material isn't high quality and well organized, the mix will suffer badly; if the editors provide crap, the mix can't be anything better than that. The Mixing category covers both the work of the mixer on the set and the work of the re-recording mixers months later. The work the editors provide in the way of sound effects is sort of obvious, but there is also a tremendous amount of work that goes into preparing the dialogue for mixing, especially with an action film where much of the dialogue must be redone later in a quiet studio.

What say you?

But there are no musicals in the sound category this year. I look back to last year, where "Bourne Ultimatum" won both Sound and Sound Mixing, and I wonder if the same will happen this year with TDK. I wouldn't mind if it did–in fact, I'd really like it. I'm going to be down in the dumps if TDK only wins Best Supporting Actor. But I also want Wall-E to win more than one award. Maybe Wall-e could win Best Musical Score instead? And it might even get Best Song (although I personally like "Jai Ho" better). This wouldn't be so pressing if "Wall-E" and TDK had been nominated for Best Picture like they should have been. If that was the case, I'd be perfectly content with Wall-E winning only Best Animated Feature and TDK winning only Best Supporting Actor. But such is not the case.