Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, the favorite to take home this year's Best Picture Oscar (despite the ongoing e-mail scandal), won for outstanding achievement in sound mixing in 2009 at the Cinema Audio Society's CAS Awards held at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Production mixer Ray Beckett and re-recording mixer Paul J. Ottosson were the award recipients.
The other feature-film nominees were James Cameron's Avatar, Neill Blomkamp's District 9, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, and Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. This represents one more "technical" Guild award that Avatar has lost this season. Also this evening, Christian Berger won the American Society of Cinematographers Award for his work on Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Earlier this month, The Hurt Locker won the Eddie Award from the American Cinema Editors. A few days ago, the Costume Designers Guild Award in the fantasy film category went to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Avatar did, however, win two awards from the Motion Picture Sound Editors, which hands out awards for sound editing (instead of sound mixing), and came out on top in the Art Directors Guild Awards' fantasy film category.
Grey Gardens, which stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, was the CAS winner in the television movie/miniseries category. The CAS recipients were production mixer Henry Embry and re-recording mixer Rick Ash.
Other television winners were the Mad Men episode "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency" in the TV series category and the "Stay Focused or Die" episode of Deadliest Catch in the TV, variety or music category.
Additionally, Coraline director Henry Selick was presented the CAS Filmmaker Award, while 14-time Oscar-nominee and two-time winner Randy Thom was handed the CAS Career Achievement Award. Thom's Oscar wins were for The Right Stuff (1983, Best Sound) and The Incredibles (2004, Best Sound Editing). Manfred N. Klemme received the CAS President's Award.
Photo: The Hurt Locker (Jonathan Olley / Summit Entertainment)