Sprint to the Oscars - Flags of Our Fathers

The Sneaky Cheetah continues his quest to see every nominated film before the Academy Awards!

Flags of Our Fathers
Nominated for Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing

After Letters from Iwo Jima, I couldn't help but be disappointed by Flags. It's definitely the lesser of two films, but a great companion piece if viewed as two sides of the same event. Eastwood even used identical shots in both films, which helps observant viewers match up the time line and locations of both films. When a certain gun pokes out of a concealed cave, Letters viewers will you know which Japanese commander is in that cave. There's also parallels in scenes where a Japanese unit commits suicide with grenades and an American soldier is pulled into a hidden cave and brutalized. Flags weakness is the half of the film that deals with the three surviving "Flag Raisers" celebrity status when they return to the states. The story is told in a confusing back and forth style. The soldiers on a money-raising tour back home with flashbacks to the battle. Even though the story concentrates on the six grunts who raised the flag (you get no insight into the commanders of the battle or the strategy, which is badly missed), you also don't really get to know the soldiers very well. I didn't care about any of them and had a hard time telling one from the other. C

Flag's nominations are Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. The sound effects editing is good, as it is in most war films. Nothing stands out to me. But the mix is very strong. There's some haunting piano music that weaves in and out of the battles that really brings home the mournful tone of the film. Flags is the front runner in this category out of the two films I've seen (the other is Pirates 2).

The Sound mixers are the Oscar winning team that did The Matrix. John T. Reitz (winner for The Matrix, nominated of 1978's Days of Heaven and The Perfect Storm), David E. Campbell (winner for The Matrix, nominated for Dick Tracy, Legends of the Fall, The Perfect Storm, and Curse of the Black Pearl), Gregg Rudloff (winner for Glory and The Matrix, nominated for The Perfect Storm), and Walt Martin (first nomination) make up a well traveled team of mixers.

The Sound Editors are the same team as Letters From Iwo Jima, and they're competing against themselves in the category.Alan Robert Murray (past nominations for 1985's Ladyhawk, 1989's Lethal Weapon 2, 1996's Eraser, 2000's Space Cowboys) and Bud Asman who also worked on Eraser and Space Cowboys.