Technical Awards

Go on, take a guess where most of this hardware is going to go.

Sound Editing and Sound Mixing go hand in hand (except for last year, for some reason) and both categories are nearly identical this year.  Both include Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, and Star Trek.  Up is up for Sound Editing and Transformers 2 is up for Sound Mixing.  These awards usually go to noisy action films or animated movies where all the effects have to be produced or edited in-studio. While there's a chance that The Hurt Locker will take one or both of the sound Oscars, I think that they'll both go to Avatar.  All of Avatar's achievements are technical achievements, and I expect the Academy to recognize that.

Visual effects?  Seriously?  Do I even need to mention that Avatar is up against District 9 and Star Trek?  This one is going straight to the blue monkey-cats.

Editing is a different story.  The nominees are Avatar, The Hurt Locker, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, and Precious.  The Hurt Locker was one of the most suspenseful films of the year, due in no small part to some intense editing.  Best Editing may get caught in an Avatar technical sweep and District 9 may upset, but I think The Hurt Locker is the strongest contender here.